I 



Until 

I 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



Chap Copyright No. 

Shelf v Ri25" 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



By the Same Author* 

Christ and Modern Unbelief, 
Second. Edition, 

12mo, cloth, $1.00; paper, 50c. 

Leo XIII. At the Bar of History, 

12mo, cloth, - $1.00 



PRESENT-DAY 

PROBLEMS 

OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT 



BY 1/ 

RANDOLPH HARBISON MCKIM, D. D. 

Rector of the Church of the Epiphany 
Washington, D. C. 



"Christianity is the Religion of the Person of Christ.' 

— Wm. E. Gladstone. 



mew 19otft 
THOMAS WHITTAKER 
2 astd 3 Bible House 



1 



82 1 : 

Library of Congress 

Iwt, Co^es Reciiveo 

NOV 30 1900 

Cop vri/rftV entry 

NOV 30 1900 

SECOND COPY 

0eiivt*r**1 to 

0R0E.K DIVISION 

DEC 13 1S00 






Copyright, 1900, 
By Thomas Whittaker 



THE CAXTON PRESS 
NEW YORK. 



TO THE MEMORY 

OF 

A BELOVED SON 



CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

I. Christianity and Buddhism— an Antithesis. 3 

II. Christian Strategy in the Mission Field. 47 

III. The Gospel of Christ and the Pseudo- 

Gospels op the Rationalist and the 

Dogmatist 67 

IV. The Incarnation in Relation to Miracle. . 99 
V. The Christian Doctrine of the Atonement. 123 

VI. The Oberammergau Passion Play. . . 141 

VII. The Bible Unique among Literatures. . 169 
VIII. Christ's Resurrection and Ascension as 

Types of Human Development. . . 191 

IX. The Unity of New Testament Doctrine. . 215 

X. The Christian Doctrine of Prayer. . . 237 

XI. Butler and his Theology 265 

XII. Luther and the Reformation. . . .297 



CHKISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM— 
AN ANTITHESIS. 



" Buddhism has exerted for centuries a refining influ- 
ence on Oriental life. Even to-day, in some parts of 
Burma, it is the root of a singularly beautiful and sim- 
ple life, flowering out into some of the purest virtues. 
But taking the East as a whole, Buddhism is almost an 
extinct spiritual force. It has hardened into a system, 
mechanised itself in prayer-wheels, tinkling bells, and 
vain repetitions. In China. . . . it is not the active force 
in life. . . . In its native home (India) Buddhism is no 
more. In Japan it has apparently helped to produce an 
externally refined character, beneath which, however, lie 
some very sinister traits and a general frame of mind 
which is oesthetic rather than religious" — From The 
Spectator, July 21, 1900, (p. 74.) 

" What a contrast this Healer of disease and Preacher 
of pardon to the worst, to Buddha with his religion of 
despair /..,.. Chrisfs attitude is not one of zealous an- 
tagonism but of grand comprehension. His teaching 
sums up and contains the best thoughts of the wise in all 
ages and all lands. It is throughout in affinity with rea- 
son. . . . Therefore Christianity is the Absolute Religion. 
It is indeed God's final word to men. " — Alex. Balmain 
Bruce. 



I. 

CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM — AN ANTITHESIS. 



Attempts have been made by a certain class of writ- 
ers to use the religion of Buddha as a means of weak- 
ening the force of the claim which Jesus of Nazareth 
makes for Himself, and for the religion of which He 
is the founder and the head. The argument may be 
stated thus : Jesus claims to be the Light of the World, 
and to have established a religion which is the absolute 
religion, before which all other religions must give 
way, because it is true and they are false ; it is super- 
naturally revealed — they are of purely natural origin. 
But the religion of Buddha presents so many resem- 
blances and parallels to the religion of Christ, — in its 
ethical code, in its spirit, and in the life of its founder, 
that the exclusive claims of the latter cannot be main- 
tained; and every open-minded man must see that both 
of these great religions are divine revelations, or 
neither is. 

But it may be shown, in answer to this, that the 
alleged points of resemblance between the two reli- 
gions, when closely scrutinized, are in many cases un- 
real, in many others greatly exaggerated, and that the 
residuum of real likeness is totally insufficient to out- 
weigh the contrasts, which are radical, fundamental, 



4 CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 

and irreconcilable; so that Buddhism, notwithstanding 
its acknowledged features of ethical excellence, must 
still, when taken as a whole, be classed as a false reli- 
gion ; while Christianity, notwithstanding the ex- 
tremely interesting features of resemblance in it to the 
religion of Buddha, stands unique and alone among 
the religions of the world, in solitary and unapproach- 
able grandeur — the one system without spot or blemish, 
the one really supernatural and sufficient revelation 
from God to man. It may be shown, also, that whereas 
the time and the place in which Christianity appeared 
are definitely and indubitably ascertained, and both 
stand out in the broad light of historical knowledge, 
the origin of Buddhism is lost in the mists of obscurity 
and uncertainty, twenty different dates being assigned 
to the death of Buddha, and these varying from 368B. 
C. to 2420 B. C, while even the most eminent recent 
specialists in Oriental literature still differ by about 
175 years in the dates assigned. Moreover, while the 
most important of the books of the New Testament 
can be traced back to the very generation in which the 
events they describe occurred, (and this is now con- 
ceded by the ablest and most candid skeptical critics, 
after a long and obstinate battle,) the sacred books of 
the Buddhists are believed by competent specialists to 
be from 400 to 1,000 years later than the events they 
record — its oral traditions being at least 200 years later 
than the events, and its written records 200 years later 
still. The legend of Buddha, so far as its features re- 
sembling Christianity are concerned, cannot be shown 
to be as old as the Christian era ; while it is considered 
certain that all the various versions of the legend into 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDB1SM. 5 

Chinese, Thibetan, Siamese, and Burmese, are of later 
date than Christianity.* 

Add to these facts a consideration of the fundamen- 
tal contrasts between the two systems — that Buddhism 
is a gigantic system of atheism, or at the best of agnos- 
ticism concerning God ;f that its purpose is not to de- 
liver man from sin, but from pain and sorrow ; that 
though it has much to say about " sin," yet the word 
connotes in its system an idea totally different from the 
Christian idea of sin, as an offence against God ; that 
its conception of " salvation " is the very antipodes of 
the Christian view ; and finally, that it makes no ap- 
proach to the Christian idea of man as a child of God, 
capable of eternal life, since it actually denies the exis- 
tence of the soul, or the possibility of a personal immor- 
tality, — and the absurdity of classing it with Christianity 
needs no further demonstration. It is the purpose of 
the following pages to present a picture of Buddhism 
sufficiently full and detailed to enable the reader to 
judge whether or not there is any such resemblance be- 
tween it and the religion of Christ as to weaken the 
claim of the latter to be the absolute religion. 



I. 

THE HISTORY OF BUDDHISM. 

A brief historical review will be of advantage in this 
discussion. Buddhism took its rise in India probably 

*See " The Light of Asia and the Light of the World," by 
S. H. Kellogg, D. D., p. 103. 

tMaurice indeed calls it " this Theistic, Atheistic, Pantheistic 
Human Doctrine. ,, — Religions of the World, page 80. 



6 CBMST1ANITY AND BUDDHISM. 

between the sixth and the fourth century before the 
Christian era, and quickly overspread that vast and 
populous region of the earth, supplanting the Brahman- 
ism, from whose bosom it sprang, but to which it was 
fundamentally opposed. It was eagerly welcomed by a 
people groaning under an oppressive and intolerable 
system of caste, since it asserted practically the equality 
of man, and broke the iron yoke of a burdensome and 
senseless ritualism. It owed its success largely to its 
moral earnestness and its intellectual grasp. It ap- 
pealed at once to the conscience and to the intellect, and 
combined catholicity of aim with intensity of ethical con- 
viction. But after flourishing and extending its sway 
in India for several centuries, it began, about the 
beginning of the Christian era, to decline, and though 
a Chinese pilgrim who visited India about A. D. 400 
found it still flourishing over a wide area,* it continued 
to lose ground until, in the eighth and ninth centuries, 
it was subjected to fierce persecutions and was finally so 
utterly exterminated that to-day it is said that there is 
not a Buddhist in all India. Students of the subject 
tell us that internal decay had preceded external dis- 
aster. The society or order of Mendicant Monks, which 
constituted the heart of the movement, had degenerated 
(as ascetic orders always have done) into a useless band 
of idle ecclesiastics, possessed, moreover, of a wealth 
which rivalled that of the most powerful monastic 
orders of the Middle Ages. The ethical precepts and 
the philosophical principles of the system were buried 
under a mass of senseless legends of the Buddha, and 
the people relapsed into the devil-worship, and even 

*Cyc. Britt., Art. " Buddhism," p. 437. 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 7 

the idolatry from which Buddhism had formerly deliv- 
ered them. But before this internal corruption had 
begun to change the true character of the system, Budd- 
hism had been introduced into Ceylon, and thence in 
the fifth century into Burinah, whence it penetrated in 
the seventh century into Siam. Its adherents in these 
countries are called the Southern Buddhists, and atten- 
tion is invited to the fact that they differ widely in be- 
lief and practice from the Northern Buddhists of 
Nepaul, China, Thibet, and Japan — so widely that it 
is in reality an absurdity to call these respective reli- 
gions by the same name. 

It was early in the Christian era that the system of 
the great Indian teacher found entrance and gained 
sway in China, which, till then, and for centuries had 
been dominated on the one hand by the practical, 
worldly philosophy of Confucius (born 551 B. C), and 
on the other by Taoism, which had degenerated into a 
system of demonology. We have only space for a single 
remark in relation to the development of Buddhism in 
the vast Chinese Empire, and that is, that it accom- 
modated itself to the religious systems already on the 
ground, and lost its distinctive features, so that to-day 
Chinese Buddhism differs fundamentally and irrecon- 
cilably from Southern Buddhism, and from Primitive 
Buddhism. The last is absolutely atheistic. But 
Foism, or Chinese Buddhism, attempts to " combine 
irreconcilable principles of atheism and polytheism," 
and it is said to be " easier to find a god than a man in 
China."* 



* "Christ and Other Masters," by Chas. Hardwick, M. A., 
p. 334. 



8 CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 

The Buddhism of Thibet, on the other hand, differs 
essentially from that of China, and both are absolutely 
diverse from the Buddhism of Sakya Muni and his 
primitive followers. The reader will observe, then, 
first, that Buddhism, as it exists to-day, is not a com- 
pact or consistent system; that it is characterized by 
multiformity rather than by uniformity ; and that its 
several forms are no more harmonious than Catholic 
Christianity and the Deism of Voltaire, or the Agnos- 
ticism of Mr. Herbert Spencer, or the Atheism of Mr. 
Robert Ingersoll. What becomes, then, of that impos- 
ing spectacle of a Buddhism which embraces within its 
poles four or five hundred millions of the human race, 
far over-shadowing numerically the religion of Jesus 
Christ? Imposing indeed were such a vast and tower- 
ing mass as this, however false in its principles — but 
when we approach, lo, it breaks up into fragments, 
and we see it no longer one system, whether of philoso- 
phy or religion, but many, and these inconsistent and 
mutually contradictory! In fact, Buddhism, as it ex- 
ists to-day, is as heterogeneous as the great image of 
Nebuchadnezzar's dream, whereof the head was of gold, 
the breast and the arms of silver, the belly and thighs 
of brass, the legs of iron, the feet part of iron and part 
of clay. What wonder, then, if we Christians expect 
the day will come when the religion of Jesus, like the 
stone cut out of the mountain without hands, will 
smite the great image and break it into pieces? It will 
also be observed that, in the light of a closer scrutiny, 
the proportions of this great religion of Buddha shrink 
to one-fourth or one-fifth the size generally assumed. 
The number of its adherents is commonly put at from 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 9 

400,000,000 to 500,000,000. But Sir Monier Williams, 
Professor of Sanscrit in the University Of Oxford, who 
has devoted more than forty years of his life to the 
study of Oriental literature, states that it does not num- 
ber more than 100,000,000 of adherents, and that it is 
rapidly declining. Another veteran scholar puts the 
number at 73,000,000. The vastness, then, of the 
numbers of the adherents of this ancient system is by 
no means so overpowering after all. 



II. 

THE LEGEND OF BUDDHA. 

Let us next examine the alleged features of resem- 
blance between the story of Gautama Buddha, or Sakya 
Muni, and the life of Jesus of Nazareth. 

They have been thus strikingly stated : The Buddha 
" came from heaven, was born of a virgin, welcomed 
by angels, received by an old saint who was endowed 
with prophetic vision, presented in a temple, baptized 
with water, and afterwards baptized with fire. He as- 
tonished the most learned doctors by his understanding 
and answers. He was led by the Spirit into the wilder- 
ness, and, having been tempted by the devil, went 
about preaching and doing wonders. The friend of 
publicans and sinners, he is transfigured on a mount, 
descends to hell, ascends to heaven." 

Truly, if we might accept this statement as correct, 
the coincidences between the two narrations were in- 
deed remarkable. But when we scrutinize these alleged 



10 CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 

resemblances, many of them are found to be imaginary, 
others to be grossly exaggerated, and the residuum of 
real likeness small. 

Take the doctrine of the pre-existence of Buddha 
and compare it with what is taught in the New Testa- 
ment of the pre-existence of Christ. The latter is 
represented as unique and peculiar — no other human 
being had existence previous to this mundane life. 
But the Buddha, in that he pre-existed, shared the 
common lot of all ; every human being is by that sys- 
tem supposed to have lived in some previous state of 
being. Moreover, the pre-existence in the two cases 
was utterly dissimilar. The Buddha had lived in many 
states and forms of being. " Eighty-three times he 
had been an ascetic, fifty-eight times a king, twenty- 
four times a Brahman, twenty times the God Sekka, 
forty-three times a tree-god, five times a slave, once a 
devil-dancer, twice a rat, twice a pig!" * It may here 
be remarked, parenthetically, that "there are limits to 
the variety of births possible to a Bodhisat. He can 
never be born as a serpent, or as any kind of vermin, 
or as a woman — in a word, in no form lower than a 
snipe." f Contrast with this the New Testament doc- 
trine of Christ's pre-existence : " In the beginning was 
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word 
was God, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt 
among us." " Father, glorify thou me with the glory 
which I had with thee before the foundation of the 
world." "The only begotten son which is in the 
bosom of the Father— He hath declared Him." It ap- 



* Kellogg, Id., p. 111. t Id., p, 112. 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 11 

pears, then, that upon this point the two stories are 
absolutely diverse instead of wonderfully alike. 

Take next the alleged virginal birth of the Buddha. 
If it were as alleged, there would be therein no matter 
of surprise, for the idea that he who is to be a de- 
liverer and Saviour of men shall be supernaturally 
born is said to be common to many peoples. Ancient 
heroes are frequently represented as the sons of virgins. 
But the original form of the legend lends no support 
to the idea ; and moreover, primitive Buddhism recog- 
nized no spirit, holy or unholy ; so that there was no 
room for such a representation as that of the Christian 
creed, "Conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the 
Virgin." 

If next, we scrutinize the alleged baptism of the 
Buddha, just before his temptation, we find it was not 
a baptism at all, but a bath which he took in a certain 
river, upon which occasion (so the story runs) " thou- 
sands of the sons of the gods, wishing to render offer- 
ings to the Bodhisat, strewed divine aloes and sandal 
powder and celestial essences and flowers of all colors 
over the water." The resemblance between this and 
the narrative of the baptism of Jesus by John the Bap- 
tist exists nowhere save in the imagination of a certain 
class of writers. 

It is not possible within our limits to consider all the 
alleged points of resemblance between the story of 
Jesus of Nazareth and the legend of Gautama Buddha. 
If the salient features are examined and shown to be 
illusory it will be sufficient for our purpose. Pass we 
then next to the presentation of the Buddha in the 
temple, which is brought forward as a parallel to the 



12 CHBISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 

gospel story. In the bare fact of such a presentation 
there is a coincidence, though there is nothing re- 
markable in it ; but how totally unlike the two inci- 
dents are will be evident as soon as we give attention 
to the Buddhist account. We are told that " when 
the Buddha was taken to the temple 100,000 gods 
drew the carriage which contained him, and showers 
of flowers were rained down by heavenly nymphs ; the 
earth quaked as he entered the temple ; music sounded 
from invisible performers in heaven; the images of the 
gods in the temple came down from their places and 
advanced and humbly fell at the feet of the Buddha 
Child." * No wonder that a learned skeptical critic 
(Kuenen) declares that the difference far overbalances 
the resemblance. 

Another parallel is sought to be established in the 
miracles which are related of the Buddha. Perhaps 
we cannot better illustrate the futility of this compari- 
son than by giving one or two examples of the miracles 
attributed to him in the legend. Thus, u in an athletic 
contest he astonished all by throwing an elephant six- 
teen miles. Just before his attainment of Buddhahood, 
having eaten the rice given him by the girl, Punna, he 
took the golden vessel and said, c If I shall be able this 
day to become a Buddha, let this pot go up the stream/ 
whereupon he threw it into the water and it went 
eighty cubits swiftly as a race-horse up the stream, 
and then, diving into a whirlpool, it went to the palace 
of the Black Snake King!" f We need hardly say 
that to compare such grotesque and senseless exhibi- 



* Kellogg, Id., p. 130. t Id. f p. 140. 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 13 

tions of power with the miracles of Jesus Christ, which 
always had a moral and redemptive purpose, gives evi- 
idence, to say the least, of a strange absence of the 
sense of proportion. 

Certain writers allege even a parallel to the resurrec- 
tion of Christ in the Buddhist legend. But the event 
recorded in the latter is not a resurrection, but a post 
mortem momentary apparition, and has no reference to 
a conquest of death, or to an eternal life, or to the re- 
habilitation of the human body. It carries with it no 
message of deliverance from death and the grave for 
the rest of mankind; nor has it any inspiration of 
moral victory for the world. To compare it with the 
resurrection of Christ is like comparing a graveyard 
ghost with an archangel glowing with the light of 
heaven. Moreover, the Buddhist scriptures repeatedly 
declare that when the Buddha died it was "with that 
utter passing away in which nothing whatever remains 
behind." The grand and inspiring thought of a risen 
and ascended living Lord finds no parallel whatever in 
the religion of Sakya Muni. 

Up to this point our inquiry has resulted in dissipa- 
ting and scattering, like a structure of vapor, the re- 
semblances which the school of writers alluded to have 
been at such pains to build up between Christianity 
and Buddhism. The fancied analogies have for the 
most part proved illusory — either because they were 
superficial, covering deep and vital differences, or be- 
cause they were imaginary, growing out of the equivo- 
cal meaning of words which connote in the different 
systems ideas quite distinct, if not contradictory. But 
now we approach a feature in which the resemblance is 



1 4 CHRISTIA NITY AND B UDDHISM. 

real. We allude to the temptation which, in the 
legend of Buddha as in the history of Jesus, is recorded 
as immediately preceding the entrance upon the active 
ministry of each. " The Buddha, we are told in the 
later accounts, suffered a terrible temptation from the 
evil one, Mara the destroyer. In the struggle he con- 
quered, and his conquest, according to Buddhist repre- 
sentations, brought light and hope to man. Then 
began his ministry. So also Christ is represented as 
having had in like manner, just before His entrance on 
His public ministry, a solitary struggle with the evil 
one. He also conquered and his victory was ours. 
That there is in this instance a very remarkable agree- 
ment between the two stories will not be denied. Es- 
pecially striking is it to find that — not indeed on the 
occasion of the great temptation, but at an earlier 
time — Mara is made to promise the future Buddha a 
universal kingdom if he will but renounce his intention 
of going out to seek a way of salvation for the world." 
The able writer, from whom we have quoted, cautions 
us, however, against exaggerations, even here, of the 
likeness between the two stories, and justly animad- 
verts upon the violence done to the Buddhist story by 
Sir Edwin Arnold in his poem " The Light of Asia." 
This charming composition conveys a quite false im- 
pression of the character of Buddhism, and particularly 
of its resemblance to the Christian religion. The poet 
has pushed poetic license far beyond the limits of 
honest truth, and, by using Christian terms and turns 
of expression in describing the life of Gautama Budd- 
ha, has, however unwittingly, produced a picture as 
inaccurate as it is beautiful. In the story of the 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 15 

temptation, for example, the Buddha is represented by 
the poet as tempted to the sin of selfishness, and then 
to the sin of the lust of fame. But the specialists tell 
us that a careful study of the terms employed reveals 
the fact that the sins alluded to were — in the one case 
the affirmation of the existence of the soul, in the 
other the desire for life in a future world. To believe 
that he had a soul, and to desire immortality, these 
were the two sins to which Gautama was tempted ! 
How different from self-indulgence and ambition, as 
the poet interprets the terms. 

After all, then, it appears that the inner nature of 
the great temptation was radically diverse in the two 
cases — so much so as to leave the Christian narrative 
unapproached in the grandeur of its significance by the 
Buddhistic legend. Still, the residuum of likeness is 
most striking and interesting, and we cannot but ask 
very earnestly indeed, how the likeness is to be ac- 
counted for. 

The writer already quoted is of opinion that the true 
account of it is, that in each case a great moral cause 
was operating; viz. this, that the human heart cannot 
but feel that the power of evil must be met and over- 
come by every man who undertakes to be a moral de- 
liverer or saviour of his fellows. This, with the reflec- 
tion in the universal heart of man, in all climes, of the 
primitive story of the temptation and the fall, were the 
materials out of which the legend of the temptation of 
Buddha sprang. 

Yet another instance of these analogies between 
the revealed religion of Christ and the human 
system of Buddha ought to be brought under review. 



16 CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 

We allude to the remarkable story, found in a very late 
authority, of the Buddha's first sermon, when " though 
he spake in the language of Magodha, each one thought 
he spoke in his own language." The similarity to the 
preaching of the Apostles on the day of Pentecost is 
obvious. Now, considering the fact that the docu- 
ment in which the story is found is not earlier than 
the year 1267 of our era, and the fact that the gospel 
had penetrated to India in the apostolic age through 
the preaching of St. Thomas, and to China in 636 A. 
D. through Nestorian missionaries, it is natural to in- 
fer that the Buddha legend had incorporated into 
itself some of the features of the Christian story, and 
that the account of this Buddhist gift of tongues is an 
instance of this. 

We touch here a very interesting line of inquiry and 
of speculation — viz., how far may not only this, but 
many other features of external resemblance between 
the two systems, be accounted for by the introduction 
of Christian elements into the Buddhist legend ? 
There was opportunity for it. The two systems met in 
India, and also in China, at a period earlier than 
many of the sacred books of Buddhism. It is affirmed 
by a competent specialist that " there is no existing 
authority for the Buddha legend, which can be traced 
back in its present form so far as the first Christian 
century ; w and again that " No one has yet proved that 
a single feature in the Buddha legend which could pos- 
sibly suggest a dependence of the gospel on that leg- 
end, or vice versa, dates from a period earlier than, sev* 
eral centuries after Christ."* 

* Kellogg, Id., pp. 156-158. 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 17 

The striking resemblance between the story of 
Krishna, the Brahman, and that of Christ is thought 
to be clearly due to the transference of Christian ele- 
ments. The same may be true also of Buddhism. 
But why may not the New Testament writers have bor- 
rowed from the Buddhist story ? First, because there 
is no evidence of any Buddhist influences in Palestine 
at the time the books of the New Testament were writ- 
ten. Secondly, because the Gospels are proven to 
have sprung from the circle of Christ's immediate fol- 
lowers, who could not have palmed off upon contem- 
poraries as veritable history any elements of the Budd- 
hist legend. This opinion is confirmed by two such 
able specialists as Professor Kuenen and Dr. Ehys 
Davids. The latter, alluding to the opinion that the 
New Testament is indebted to Buddhism, writes: "I 
must be allowed to enter a protest against an inference 
which seems to be against the rules of sound historical 
criticism." And Professor Kuenen: "I think we may 
safely affirm that we must abstain from assigning to 
Buddhism the smallest direct influence on the origin of 
Christianity. However attractive the hypothesis that 
brings Jesus in connection with the Buddhists may 
possibly appear, and however it may lend itself to ro- 
mantic treatment, yet sober and strict historic research 
gives it no support and indeed condemns it." * 

Two conclusions seem established by the labors and 
investigations of scholars in the vast and tangled 
jungle of Oriental literature: first, that there is no evi- 
dence to show, and no reason to consider it probable, 
that the religion of Buddha exercised any influence 

* Hibbert Lectures, pp. 251-2. 



18 CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 

whatever upon the early records of Christianity, so as 
to give the faintest color to the supposition that the 
gospel story has borrowed any single feature or inci- 
dent from the Buddha legend; and secondly, that it is 
conceded J;hat the gospel story was introduced into 
India and China at a period anterior to the writing of 
much of the Buddhist literature, so that there was op- 
portunity for a transference of some of the features of 
the Christian history into the Buddhist legend; and 
moreover there is no little probability that such a 
transference of Christian ideas into Buddhist literature 
did take place. 

And now let us try to sum up in one view the result 
of a comparison of the life of Jesus of Nazareth and 
the legend of Sakya Muni, or Gautama the Buddha. 
The one was bred in poverty, the adopted son of 
a carpenter. The other was the son of a prince and 
was bred in wealth and splendor. The one was 
from his infancy to the end sinless, without spot or 
blemish upon his life. The other lived in the 
world's pleasures, a life of carnal indulgence, with no 
pretence of sinlessness, until he reached the age of 
twenty-nine. The one is represented as quitting the 
throne of the universe and taking human nature upon 
Him that He might redeem mankind from sin and 
death, and open the gates of everlasting life to all who 
would open their hearts to His saving power. The 
other, overwhelmed with the thought of his own 
wretchedness and that of the whole race of man, 
renounced his wife and child and his father's 
kingly court, and the prospects of earthly honor, 
that he might grapple with the problem of 



CHRISTIANITY AND B UDDHISM. 1 9 

human pain and misery and find out the solution 
of it. In this, we may pause to remark, lies the 
beauty and strength of the Buddha story. Self-renun- 
ciation for the weal of others is always beautiful, noble, 
inspiring, and the marvelous success of Buddhism is in 
no small degree due to the influence of this story of 
"the great renunciation" upon the human heart. 
Add to this, that Gautama is represented "as a man of 
gentle, ardent, pensive, philanthropic nature," beauti- 
ful in person, magnetic in his address, and gifted with 
marveleus eloquence, and that he preached a morality 
far more lofty than any other heathen teacher. 

But even so, mark the fundamental differences be- 
tween Jesus of Nazareth and the Hindu deliverer/ 
The object of the one was to save the world from moral 
corruption, from guilt, and from the consequences of 
sin. The object of the other was to save man from 
pain. The one accomplished his end by giving His life 
a ransom, by making on the cross a sacrifice for sin, 
shedding His blood for the remission of sin, putting 
away sin by the sacrifice of Himself ; this was the cen- 
tral thought and purpose of His work for the human 
race. . But the other repudiated altogether the idea of 
sacrifice, never hinted at an atonement for sin, never 
professed to do anything for the purgation of sin ; but 
came forward simply as a teacher to show man how to 
save himself from the evils and calamities of life. Ac- 
cordingly he lived to the age of eighty, continuing his 
teaching to the end, and dying at last in peace. In a 
word, Jesus Christ died to save men from sin and to 
open to them the gates of everlasting life. Buddha 
lived and preached and labored to establish a system of 



20 



CHRISTIANITY AND B UDDI1ISM. 



metaphysical and social philosophy by which men 
might be emancipated from the desire of life and all 
things in it, and so at last attain to Nirvana— that is to 
say, extinction, utter and absolute cessation of con- 
sciousness .and of existence. Some writers indeed 
speak of the "Path of immortality" as the aim of the 
Buddhist's teaching, and Sir Edwin Arnold paints 
Gautama as contemplating, as the result of his self- 
sacrifice, 

" That shall be won for which he lost the world, 
And death should find him conqueror of death." 

But such use of words is utterly misleading, for 
Buddha teaches us that the only escape from death is 
to escape from existence ; unless you conquer desire — 
all desire, including desire of life, here and hereafter — 
you will be born again and die again in an endless 
cycle of misery. But when once you have conquered 
desire, you will enter into Nirvana — unconsciousness, 
the absolute cessation of being. So shall you conquer 
death by escaping the necessity of a future new birth 
and shall pass away as the smoke vanishes or the early 
mist. And this is the consummation of the hope of 
the Buddhist, and the crowning achievement of the 
philosophy of Sakya Muni ! Could any two systems 
be more diverse in their principles, in their aims, in 
their real significance ? Is it not plain that notwith- 
standing the striking resemblance between the life of 
Jesus and the legend of Sakya Muni in some few exter- 
nal and superficial particulars, the spirit and the 
significance and the purpose of the two lives are com- 
pletely diverse ? 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 21 

III. 

THE ETHICS OF BUDDHISM. 

Let us now proceed to examine the ethical system of 
Buddha, and to estimate the character and extent of 
its influence upon the human race. 

Now it may fairly be claimed that if Buddhism has 
had a humanizing and elevating influence upon the mil- 
lions who have accepted its teaching, then we must ad- 
mit a priori that its ethical principles must have been in 
part, at least, true and good. Christian teachers 
should accept the test given by Christ himself, " By 
their fruits ye shall know them," Let this be freely 
granted, and more than this, that the system of the 
great Hindoo teacher has exercised a beneficent in- 
fluence over large portions of the globe. It is indeed a 
vast and almost a grotesque exaggeration to speak of it 
as "the Christianity of the East." But when we 
compare it, in its earlier and purer form, with the 
frightful systems of religion and of practice which it 
supplanted — cannibalism, demon-worship, serpent-wor- 
ship, and forms of idolatry the most degraded and pol- 
luted — it appears indeed like an angel of light ; and it 
is not too much to say that it brought healing on its 
wings, at least for some of the evils and some of the 
corruptions of life as it was in Asia at the time it arose. 
It lifted the yoke of caste from millions of the human 
race ; it poured over wide regions of the globe streams of 
humanizing and civilizing influences. " We behold it," 
says Mr. Hardwick, " shaping many a savage horde into 
a peaceful confraternity. It quenched the violence of 
domestic strife ; it sheathed the scimitars of the blood- 



22 CHMST1AN1TY AND BUDDHISM. 

thirsty Mongols, who were bent on carrying desolation 
to the very heart of Europe ; it planted convents and 
therewith conventual schools and libraries in regions 
heretofore oppressed by every kind of demonolatry and 
darkness ; it carried some imperfect elements of Hindu 
civilization far across the sandy wastes of Tartary, and 
shed some glimmerings of a higher light within the bor- 
ders of Siberia." * It is an impressive spectacle which 
is presented by the devoted Buddhist missionaries 
going forth to convert the world — not like the Mussul- 
man with a sword, not by an appeal to man's base 
passions, but with a system of moral and metaphysical 
truth (as they believed) and by an appeal to the in- 
tellect and the conscience. We must give Buddhism 
the credit of having risen alone among Pagan religions 
to the conception of a world-wide empire of truth, and 
we must recognize "the mildness of its tone, the 
gentleness of its demeanor, and the diffusiveness of its 
philanthropy." It has taught men to despise the 
wealth and the honor and the fame of the world, to be 
patient under suffering, and not to resent injuries. 
It gave a recognition to the rights of women which 
hitherto had been denied them among Asiatic peoples 
outside of Judaism, f and it founded hospitals for the 
blind, the destitute, and the diseased. In the light of 
such facts as these, it cannot and ought not to be 

* Hardwick, Id., p. 342. 

t Nevertheless one who has lived and labored in the East 
writes: "Among all Buddhist sects and in all Buddhist lands 
the position of woman is an inferior and servile one." — Kev. 
L. M. Gordon, Japan. See " World's Parliament of Religions/' 
p. 1294. 



CHBisTiAmrr and buddhism. 23 

denied that Buddhism does in some important respects 
stand alone and unapproached among the natural reli- 
gions of the world. Ethically it has no peer outside 
of the pale of revealed religion. Let this be frankly 
admitted. 

If, now, we examine the ethical code of Buddha, we 
find first of all the five commandments, — Not to kill, 
not to steal, not to lie, not to drink what can intoxi- 
cate, not to commit adultery ; and obedience was en- 
joined to the spirit as well as to the letter of these 
prohibitions. Let us next give some extracts from the 
Buddhist Scriptures, which all will admit glow with 
ethical beauty: " He who holds back rising anger 
like a rolling chariot, him I call a real driver; other 
people but hold the reins." " Let a man overcome his 
anger by love, let him overcome evil with good; let him 
overcome the greedy with liberality, the liar by truth." 
"Beware of the anger of the tongue, and control thy 
tongue ! Leave the sins of thy tongue and practice 
virtue with thy tongue." Again : " Anger, intoxica- 
tion, obstinacy, bigotry, deceit, envy, grandiloquence, 
pride and conceit, intimacy with the unjust ; this is 
uncleanness, but not the eating of flesh." Yet again : 
u If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain 
follows him as the wheel follows the foot of an ox that 
draws the carriage." In another place we read that in 
answer to the question what is the highest good, Gau- 
tama made answer : "Much insight and much educa- 
tion, a complete training and pleasant speech — this is 
the greatest blessing. To succor father and mother, to 
cherish wife and child, to follow a peaceful calling — 
this is the greatest blessing. To give alms and to live 



24 CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 

righteously, to help one's relatives and to do blameless 
deeds — this is the greatest blessing. Eeverence and 
lowliness, contentment and gratitude, the regular hear- 
ing of the law — this is the greatest blessing. A mind 
unshaken by things of the world, without anguish or 
passion, and secure — this is the greatest blessing." * 

Such noble utterances as these go far to justify a 
writer of our day in saying, "Self-conquest and uni- 
versal charity, these are the foundation thoughts, the 
web and woof of Buddhism, the melodies on the varia- 
tions of which its enticing harmony is built up." 

But the moral law of Sakya Muni, beautiful as it is, 
labors under several fatal defects. Let us briefly indi- 
cate some of them : 

It has no authority over man. The five command- 
ments just quoted are not, properly speaking, com- 
mandments at all. It is significant that they are not 
stated in the imperative form. They read : " Not to 
kill, not to steal ; " rather than, " Thou shalt not kill, 
thou shalt not steal ; " for Buddhism recognized no God 
who has ordained this law, or who enforces obedience 
thereto. It rests, therefore, purely on expediency. 
Observation shows that the violation of these maxims 
produces pain ; but the very conception of a law-giver 
who has ordained them, who requires obedience there- 
to, and who will punish disobedience, is entirely ab- 
sent from the system. Morality, then, has no higher 
sanction than enlightened expediency. Hence "the 
whole moral system is not mandatory but merely ad- 
visory ; the idea of authority — supreme, absolute and 
uncompromising — which is omnipresent in the ethics 

* Cyc. Britt., Art. Buddhism, p. 436. 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 25 

of the Bible, is wholly absent from Buddhist ethics." * 
We see, then, how wide a gulf separates the morality of 
the two systems. No external resemblance can atone 
for this deep fundamental difference. 

But even the outward features of resemblance have 
been greatly exaggerated. We hear that Buddhism, as 
well as Judaism and Christianity, has its " Ten Com- 
mandments." Let us, then, compare these codes and 
see if they are really so much alike as is often alleged. 
Now we are met on the threshold by the fact that there 
is nothing whatever in the Buddhist code to corre- 
spond with the first table of the Mosaic Decalogue. That 
first table, consisting of the first four commandments, 
sets before us our duty toward God. But Buddhism 
recognizes no God, and of course, therefore, has no 
precepts concerning man's duty to Him.f Truly a glar- 



* Kellogg, Id., p. 283. 

t At the recent "Parliament of Religions" a prominent 
Oriental speaker denied that Buddhism inculcates dogmatic 
atheism, yet the same writer himself says: " A system in which 
our whole well-being, past, present, and to come, depends on 
ourselves, theoretically leaves little room for the interference, 
or even existence, of a personal God. But the atheism of 
Buddhism was a philosophical tenet." (H. Darmapala, " Par- 
liament of Religions," p. 1288.) And again, speaking of Deity 
in the sense of a supreme creator, Buddha says there is no 
such being. . . He condemns, the idea of a " Creator." Of 
what avail is it to affirm that the system admits a " supreme 
God of the Brahman and minor gods," in the face of utterances 
such as we have quoted? The Rev. S. G. McFarland of Siam, 
(another speaker at the Parliament of Religions), well said: 
" Whatever may be said of esoteric Buddhism and its teach- 
ings, the fact cannot be denied that, so far as the ordinary Sia- 
mese Buddhist is concerned, he acknowledges no Creator, no 



26 CHMSTlAmTY AND BUDDHISM. 

ing contrast is there between the two systems! The 
half of the territory covered by the one is untouched by 
the other! Of man's duty to God, the "Christianity 
of Asia" knows nothing. It is only in relation to 
man's duty to his neighbor that there is anything in 
common between the two. 

But how far does the agreement extend in that re- 
gion of duty? Four of the five commandments which 
Buddha enjoined, or rather advised, for laymen, (for he 
had one code for the laity and another for the monks, 
while Christianity makes no distinction), appear to 
correspond with the Mosaic Decalogue — viz. : Not to 
kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to lie. 
But the first of these differs vitally from the Mosaic 
and Christian law, for it forbids the killing of any liv- 
ing thing, bird or beast or fish, insect or vermin or 
deadly serpent, as well as man. In a Buddhist parable, 
a carpenter who had pierced a fly with a splinter of 
wood is represented as condemned in consequence to 
suffer the torture of being impaled. There is no com- 
mandment corresponding to our fifth commandment ; 
but the duty of honoring parents is elsewhere strongly 
commended, and the sin of coveting is forbidden. 

Pass we now to the second table of the Buddhist 
Decalogue. Like the first, it contains five command- 
ments — viz.: Sixth, not to eat at prohibited seasons; 
seventh, not to wear wreaths or use dentifrices or per- 



Great First Cause; he owes allegiance to no Supreme Be- 
ing; and he looks forward to no accountability." (Id., p. 1297.) 
Still another writer says: " In one circle it is materialistic and 
atheistic, in another polytheistic and idolatrous, in a third 
idealistic and pantheistic." — Id., p. 1294. 



CBK1STIANITY AJStD BUDDHISM. 27 

fumes; eighth, not to sleep on a high broad bed; ninth, 
to abstain from dancing, music, and stage plays; tenth, 
to abstain from the use of gold or silver. Nothing in 
our Decalogue corresponds to these five commandments, 
so that the two Decalogues have more points of differ- 
ence than of likeness. 

Our next criticism upon the ethical system of 
Gautama Buddha is that it involves moral confusion. 
We find puerile regulations respecting diet and the 
mode of living included among the great moral pre- 
cepts upon which human conduct should be regulated. 
" Prohibitions of eating at wrong times, or sleeping on 
a high or broad bed, are classified with the prohibi- 
tions of lying and theft. In a list of offences requiring 
confession and expiation, along with lying and slander, 
are enumerated digging the ground, or causing it to be 
dug; sprinkling on the ground water with living crea- 
tures in it ; poking one another with the finger; and, 
with certain specified exceptions, bathing oftener than 
once in two weeks." * But there is worse confusion 
yet. For not only is the killing of an ant a sin of the 
same degree as the killing of a man ; but the noblest 
aspirations of man — his longing after immortality, his 
desire for a better life, even his agonizing yearnings 
after moral perfection — are, in the system of Buddha, 
condemned as sinful desires, to be completely extir- 
pated. Moreover, while this marvelous scheme of 
metaphysical and ethical philosophy is worthy of 
praise, chiefly because of the stress it lays upon moral 
duties, yet, strange to say, it is not to the moral part of 
its own system that it attaches the most importance. 

* Kellogg, Id., p. 307. 



28 CHRISTIANITY AJSTD BTJbDBlSM. 

It has three codes of life, two of which only we have 
been able to allude to here, and the strictly moral 
code (that comprised in the first five commandments) 
holds the lowest place in the Temple of Buddha. The 
second code, with its trivial regulations as to diet and 
sleep, and music and dancing and the like, occu- 
pies a higher niche, and receives far greater honor, than 
those really sublime precepts of morality which are 
practically coincident with much of the second table of 
the -Decalogue. " The higher law is not the law that 
directs me not to lie and steal, though it includes 
these, but that which forbids me to use a broad bed, to 
use perfumes or tooth powders, as also to believe in my 
own personality, or desire to go to heaven ! Precepts 
such as these distinguish the higher from the lower 
law! And so, after all, it proves not to be true that 
Buddhism gives morality, as we understand the word, 
the highest place in its system of salvation," 

Truly Buddhism did not recognize its own glory. 
That in the system which was the most noble, most 
admirable, and which did most to elevate its myriads 
of adherents and to soften the hard features of life, 
was in its own view the least honorable and the least 
important. Though a man should be patient and 
honest and truthful, contented and modest, generous 
and unselfish, free from malice and covetousness, lov- 
ing and forgiving, he could have no hope of the su- 
preme felicity, Nirvana, if he used tooth-powder or slept 
in a high bed ! And though one should, in addition 
to the noble moral precepts inculcated in the first five 
commandments, also observe the puerile regulations of 
the other five, still he would be inexorably excluded 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 29 

from Nirvana so long as he believed in the existence of 
the soul or doubted the truth of Gautama's scheme of 
atheism ! Had we not reason to say that Buddhism 
does not recognize its own glory? Yes, and exalting to 
highest honor the denial of the human soul and of the 
hope of immortality, and the belief in its doctrine of a 
godless universe, it glories in its shame ! * 

Is it necessary, in the face of what we have now 
seen, to demonstrate the unspeakable superiority of 
the Christian religion as a moral system? Its ethical 
code is undisfigured by such trivialities and absurdities 
as we have found in Buddha's, but is everywhere ma- 
jestic and sublime. No such moral confusion as we 
have described there is to be found in it ; its perspec- 
tive and proportion never fail. And it not only pro- 
pounds a faultless morality, but builds it upon the 
impregnable basis of the sanction of the great Creator 
and Judge of mankind, while it also supplies a motive 
sufficient to make it effective. 



IV. 

THE BUDDHISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. 

The first postulate of the system under examination, 
in regard to human life, is that it is essentially evil. 

* The following, from Professor Kuenen, throws light upon 
the true reading of Buddhism as an ethical system: "Its mis- 
sion is not to root out what it holds to be deadly error, or to 
proclaim precious truths, nor in the first instance to contend 
against moral evils, or to build up a society in which righteous- 
ness and peace shall dwell. It seeks not to convert, but to res- 
cue — to rescue from delusion and desire. The moral life 
is not its end, but its means."— Hlbbert Lectures, p. 303. 



30 CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 

Existence is always and everywhere an evil, because all 
existence involves pain. Consequently, to escape from 
individual existence is the chief end, the highest goal 
of man. Starting from this basis, Buddhism builds up 
its philosophy of life. Pain arises from desire; there- 
fore crush out all desire. For example, we read in one 
of their sacred Scriptures: "He who fosters no desires 
for this world, or for the next, has no inclinations and 
is unshackled; him I call a Brahman." "He who, 
having no desires, travels about without a home, in 
whom all desire is extinct, him I call a Brahman." * 
Again: "If thou keepest thyself silent as a broken 
gong, then thou hast attained Nirvana. Desire is the 
worst ailment, the body the greatest of evils. When 
this is properly known there is Nirvana, the highest 
bliss." f It follows that married life is contemned and 
the family stigmatized as one of the chief sources of 
evil. We read: "The house life is pain, the seat of 

impurity From acquaintanceship arises 

fear, from house-life arises defilement; the houseless 
life, freedom from acquaintanceship — this is indeed 
the view of a wise man. In him who has intercourse 
w r ith others, affections arise, (and then) the pain that 
follows affection. Considering the misery that origi- 
nates in affection, let one wander alone like a rhinoce- 
ros. Just as a large bamboo tree (with its branches) 
entangled (in each other, such is) the care one has with 
children and wife; (but) like the shoot from the bamboo 
not clinging (to anything), let one wander alone 
like a rhinoceros." "So long as the love of man 



* Kellogg, p. 204, t Id., p. 214. 



CHRIS TIA NITY AND B UDDHISM. 3 1 

toward woman, even the smallest, is not destroyed, so 
long is his mind in bondage." * Extreme ascetism, 
then, is the Buddhistic ideal. There is no entrance 
into Nirvana but by the path of this rigid abjuration of 
the world, of social life, of domestic life, of all earthly, 
yes heavenly, desires. Professor Kuenen has given the 
following definition of the system: "A monastic order, 
with its lay associates — such is Buddhism." f The 
same writer goes on to say: " Nowhere does the essen- 
tial nature of religion reveal itself more distinctively 
than in its attitude toward asceticism," J and he is of 
the opinion that the fundamental difference between 
Buddhism and Christianity is seen just here. For while 
asceticism is so essential to Buddhism that it could not 
exist without it, it has no place in primitive Christian- 
ity; " it is no part of its essential idea — it is at best 
only the natural but one-sided development of certain 
elements in the original movement, coupled with gross 
neglect of others which have equal or still higher right 
to assert themselves." § To this testimony of Kuenen, 
surely a disinterested witness, let me add that of Dr. 
Rhys Davids, another Hibbert lecturer: "The views of 
life set forth (in the sacred Scriptures of the Buddhists) 
are fundamentally opposed to those set forth in the 
New Testament." Yes they are indeed "fundamen- 
tally opposed! " The one looks upon life as essentially 
and incurably an evil, a calamity from which the wise 
man will seek to escape ; the other holds it divine in its 
origin and beneficent in its significance. The one sees 
in the human body nothing but a fountain of tempta- 

* Id., p. 316. t Hibbert Lectures, p. 286, 
\ Id., p. 306. § Id., p. 306, 



32 CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 

tion, the other beholds in it the glorious handiwork of 
a wise and merciful Creator. The one brands the home 
and family life and family affections as sore evils, to be 
abjured and abandoned — the other glorifies them as 
God's good gifts and as the best training-school of charac- 
ter; and finally, while the one despises all social rela- 
tions and the business of common life, the other accepts 
them as of divine appointment, and enjoins upon its 
disciples to be "diligent in business, serving the Lord." 
In the words of the late Archdeacon Hard wick: 
" Though Christianity is found to be unsparing in con- 
demnation of worldliness, it has nevertheless repudiated 
the heathenish idea that any creature of God is evil in 
itself. Christianity, so far from doing violence to any 
of our natural duties and relationships, has conse- 
crated all of them afresh; so far from laboring to pluck 
up the instincts and affections proper to humanity, it 
renders them more true and sensitive, because it ren- 
ders them more Christlike — purifying and refining and 
ennobling. Such was also the conviction of the early 
Christians. When the heathen were disposed to charge 
them with indifference to the practical business of so- 
ciety and the requirements of the State, the accusation 
was indignantly refuted by their ardent and severe 
apologist: ' We are no Brahmans (said Tertullian) nor 
Indian Gymnosophists, dwellers in woods, estranged 
from the affairs of life. We know that our duty is to 
give thanks for everything to God, the Lord and 
Creator. We are far from wishing to repudiate any 
one of his works. We are temperate, it is true, and 
learn to use without abusing/ * Yes, Christianity 



* " Christ and Other Masters," pp. 246-7. 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 33 

4 preaches more and more distinctly of the sacredness 
of human nature, as restored and glorified in Christ; 
it lays new stress on the material part of man, as 
wedded to his individual spirit, and as destined with 
that spirit to live on forever; and thus, while Budd- 
hism plants us in a sepulchre and extols it as our place 
of refuge from all human sorrows and from all the 
burdens of the flesh, the gospel rolls away the stone 
from the door of the sepulchre and makes us free in- 
deed, and points us to the ultimate redemption of the 
body and the glorification of our whole humanity/" * 
Another profound student of the religions and lit- 
erature of the East, Sir Monier Williams, thus ex- 
presses the contrasted views of life taken by the two 
systems: 44 ' Glory in your sufferings, rejoice in them, 
make them steps toward heaven/ says the gospel of 
Christ. 4 Away with all suffering, stamp it out, for it 
is the plague of humanity/ says the gospel of Buddha. 
'Sanctify your affections/ says the one; ' suppress 
them utterly/ says the other. 4 Cherish your body 
and present it as a living sacrifice to God/ says the 
Christian gospel; < get rid of your body as the greatest 
of all curses/ says the Buddhist/' It is plain, then, 
what is the philosophy of life, which Buddhism pro- 
claims to the world: it is a dark and dreary pessimism, 
which has its parallel not in the religion of Christ, but 
in the cheerless philosophy of Schopenhauer and Hart- 
mann.f We do not forget that Buddhism undertakes 

* Id., p. 247. 

t Compare the verdict of Rev. Mr. Gordon, of Japan: " It is 
pessimism; it looks upon the world as one of suffering only— 
a world to flee f rom."— World's Parliament of Religions, p. 1294, 



34 CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 

to deliver man from pain and to point out the path to 
the perfect bliss of Nirvana. 

But what is this Nirvana? And what is the nature 
of the bliss it confers upon those who, to attain it, join 
the Sangha, or order of Mendicants, and become 
Bhikkhus, monks, or Munis, solitary ones? (These 
only, may it be remembered, have hope of Nirvana. 
For all others, for the multitude of adherents, or lay 
associates who do not join the order of Mendicant 
Monks, there is nothing to look forward to but an end- 
less succession of births, in states of greater or less 
misery.) Many are the glowing terms in which 
Nirvana has been described. It is the abode of happi- 
ness; " the home of peace; " "the harbor of refuge;" 
"the eternal peace where there is no more death;" 
" the end of suffering; " " the shore of salvation; " " the 
medicine for all evil;" "the transcendent, formless, 
tranquil state."* Sir Edwin Arnold, in his beautiful 
but misleading poem, "The Light of Asia," describes 
it as "That life which knows no age," "that blessed 
last of deaths, where death itself is dead," And the 
late James Freeman Clark maintained that Nirvana is 
" absorption in God " or " union with God, the infinite 
Being." f 

But whatever doubt may have formerly existed 
as to the meaning of Nirvana — whether it meant a 
blissful, everlasting trance for the soul, or a complete 
extinction, or cessation of being — is now, we are told 
by the experts, set at rest. "Buddhism does not ac- 



* Cyc.Britt., Art. " Buddhism,' > p. 433. 
t " Ten Great Religions/' pp. 162, 168. 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. oo 

knowledge the existence of the soul as a thing distinct 
from the parts and powers of man, which is dissolved 
at death, and the Nirvana of Buddhism is simply 
extinction."* 

Again another authority says, "Nirvana — c extinc- 
tion, ' ' blowing out/ Such was the supreme felicity of 
the Buddha; such the goal to which he ever pointed 
the aspirations of his followers. It was formerly dis- 
puted whether more was meant by the expression Nir- 
vana than eternal quietude, unbroken sleep, impene- 
trable apathy; but the oldest literature of Buddhism 
will scarcely suffer us to doubt that Gautama intended 
by it nothing short of absolute annihilation, the des- 
truction of all elements which constitute existence." \ 
A single quotation from their Scriptures upon this 
point must suffice. In reply to a question addressed to 
him as to whether there will be consciousness in the state 
of Nirvana, the Buddha says: "As a flame blown about 
by the violence of the wind, Upasiva, goes out, can- 
not be reckoned (as existing,) even so a Muni (i. e., a 
monk) delivered from name and body disappears, and 
cannot be reckoned (as existing.)" 

Upasiva: "Has he (only) disappeared, or does he not 
exist (any longer) ? Explain that thoroughly tome." 

Buddha: "For him who has disappeared there is no 
form, Upasiva. That by which they say, 'He is ' 
exists for him no longer." J 

At the same time we must distinguish two senses in 
which the word Nirvana is used in the Buddhist writ- 

* Cyc. Britt., Art. "Buddhism," p. 434. 

t " Christ and Other Masters," p. 165. 

t See Kellogg, Id., p. 219. 



36 CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 

ings. Sometimes it denotes a mental state of conquest 
over all desires, attainable in this life, as a consequence 
of which all pain disappears. Sometimes it refers to 
final extinction and annihilation. But the former in- 
variably and infallibly leads to the latter — total and 
everlasting annihilation of being. 

Buddhism, then, has no gospel for a weary world 
better than the gospel of annihilation. It proclaims 
" deliverance " for man, but the path of deliverance 
leads to a bottomless gulf of nothingness. This escape 
from evil and pain by escaping from existence is in- 
deed represented as a blessing, but even this is attaina- 
ble by almost no one; for an eminent scholar, Rhys 
Davids, tells us that " only two laymen are said ever to 
have attained this salvation; and even among the monks 
only one or two since the time of Buddha." Set this 
dreary doom of annihilation over against the hope full 
of immortality which Christianity offers to man, and 
you have some conception of the eternal gulf of differ- 
ence which divides the two systems. 

It goes without saying, after this, that Buddhism 
holds forth no hope for the race any more than for the 

individual man. Professor Kuenen calls attention to 

* 

this contrast with the Christian religion in his lectures 
already quoted. He refers to the belief in the triumph 
of Jehovah over everything that opposes him, " the ex- 
pectation of the kingdom of God, the confident trust 
in the realization of the moral idea ; " and adds: " This 
is what Buddhism does not possess and therefore can- 
not give. It is a blank which cannot be filled, and 
which nothing can compensate." " The conception of 
the kingdom of God, one of the chief factors in the 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 3? 

genesis of Christianity, remains through all ages its 
best recommendation and its greatest might. M 

It now only remains to consider briefly the practical 
working of this great philosophical system which men 
call the Keligion of Buddha. To what extent has it 
uplifted and ennobled the people who have submitted to 
its sway ? If the tree must be judged by its fruit, 
what has been the fruit of this great tree under which 
so many myriads of the sons of men have sought ref- 
uge ? We have already paid our tribute to the civiliz- 
ing and humanizing influence of the Keligion of 
Buddha over wide areas of the globe; doubtless it may 
have " proved an engine for exalting the character of 
millions who embraced it/' especially when they have 
previously been under the sway of a ruder or more san- 
guinary creed. Doubtless, in its practical influence as 
well as in the purity of its moral precepts, it marks a 
great advance upon the Brahmanism of the Hindus, as 
well as upon the rude Cults of Central Asia. Never- 
theless in the crucial points of moral reformation it has 
proved a conspicuous failure. Although it denounces 
idolatry, it has proved utterly unable to redeem its 
own followers from the practice of it, or to banish "the 
hereditary demon-worship and the vulgar deprecation 
of the serpent." In China it has even increased and fos- 
tered idolatry. A distinguished writer, already often 
quoted, says: "It has left the countries which it over- 
ran the prey of superstition and demon-worship, of 
political misrule and spiritual lethargy. Confessing 
no supreme God, who is at once the Legislator and the 
Judge, its moral code was ultimately void of all author- 
ity. . . . Vice had no intrinsic hideousness, and 



38 CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 

virtue was another name for calculating prudence." * 
No wonder it has been " wellnigh powerless in the train- 
ing of society." Its own inherent principles foredoomed 
it to failure. It has not conquered idolatry, but in 
every country has been conquered by it. Buddha him- 
self, who denied that there was any God, and built 
his system on atheistic principles, has been deified 
and his images are everywhere venerated. It put a 
stigma on marriage, and exalted the celibate life as the 
path of perfection; yet it seems to have had no appre- 
ciable effect in supressing polygamy and polyandry. 
It has failed to produce a lofty type of moral living 
even among its monks, who are consecrated wholly to 
the pursuit of its highest aims. The evidence availa- 
ble goes to show that Buddhist monasticism, like the 
monasticism which has flourished in the Christian 
Church, has proved a moral failure. In Japan, for ex- 
ample, the Buddhist priests are reported to be gener- 
ally addicted to lying and stealing and licentious liv- 
ing. 

The same is said to be the case in China and in 
Burmah. The testimony of our own Bishop Schere- 
schewsky, late missionary Bishop of Shanghai, is very 
emphatic to this effect: "For more than twenty years 
I have been a student of Buddhism. I have thoroughly 
studied the Buddhist books. I have talked with hun- 
dreds of Buddhist priests and monks, Chinese and 
Mongolian, Thibetan; I have visited many Buddhist 
temples ; I have even lived in such. Therefore, laying 
aside all mock modesty, I feel competent to state that a 
more gigantic system of fraud, superstition and idola- 

* " Christ and Other Masters," p. 169. 



CHBtSTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 39 

try, than Buddhism as it now is, has seldom been in- 
flicted by any false religion upon mankind." * Another 
authority affirms that the Foist monks, "who are 
nominally bound by far more stringent regulations 
than the rest of the community, are said to go beyond 
their pupils in the puerility of their superstitions and 
immorality of their lives. The ignorance, selfishness, 
chicanery, mendacity, mendicancy and idleness of the 
bonzes cannot be exaggerated." f It would seem indeed 
that the golden age of Buddhism, when it was indeed 
an ameliorating, civilizing and humanizing force in the 
world, lies far behind our time. As it exists to-day it 
does not deserve the encomiums which we have yielded 
it in this essay. If we enlarge our view, and take a 
broad survey of the countries over which it holds sway, 
we see no reason to suppose that it has any hold upon 
the future of the world's moral and intellectual prog- 
ress. It is a most significant and instructive fact to 
which Maurice calls our attention, — deeply though his 
big heart yearns to find " the soul of good in things 
evil" — that "that portion of the globe over which 
Buddhism rules, is nearly the most ignorant portion of 
it." X Neither the science nor the civilization, nor the 
progress of the world, has anything to hope for from 
the philosophy or the religion of Gautama Buddha- 
The degraded, or else the stagnant, state of the peoples 
over whom it has most unlimited sway to-day gives 
evidence irrefragable upon this point. 
Nor has it within its bosom the seeds of liberty or of 

* 1ST. Y. Semi-weekly Tribune, March 16, 1883. 
t " Christ and Other Masters," p. 341. 
% %i Religions of the World," p. 94. 



40 CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 

heroic devotion to the vindication of the rights of man. 
Says Kuenen : " Buddhism has succeeded in taming bar- 
barians, and still shows itself admirably calculated to 
assist in maintaining order and discipline ; but has it 
ever supported a people in its endeavors after progress, 
in its recuperative efforts when smitten by disaster, in 
its struggle against despotism? No such instances are 
known. And indeed we had no right to expect them. 
Buddhism does not measure itself against this or that 
abuse, does not further the development or reformation 
of society, either directly or indirectly, for the very 
simple reason that it turns away from the world on 
principle." Such a system could never prove the in- 
spiration of progress, or the champion of human rights, 
or the mother of liberty, as Christianity has done. It 
could never have its Eunnymede or its Magna Oharta. 
It could never bring to birth a Washington or a Luther 
or a Christopher Columbus. It could never awaken a 
thirst for knowledge or be a patron and promoter of the 
arts and sciences. What preposterous folly is it, then, 
to put the ethical system of Buddha side by side with 
that of Christ, or to institute a comparison between the 
influence it has exerted upon mankind and that which 
has flowed, in streams of life and hope and knowledge 
and progress, from the religion of Jesus of Nazareth! 

To recapitulate the contrast we have pointed out be- 
tween the two systems, Buddhism and Christianity. 
The religion of Jesus is historical and appeals to records 
now conceded to belong to the generation in which it 
took its rise. The religion of Gautama is of such leg- 
endary origin that, in the words of a great rationalist 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 41 

scholar, Buddha, as he is known to us, is a creation of 
European scholars. (Kuenen, p. 276.) The one pro- 
claims, as the first article of its faith, belief in a 
Father-God who loves the world; the other says, There 
is no God: man is an orphan on the desert shore of 
Time. The one believes man to be the child of God, 
made originally in his image and capable of eternal life 
and blessedness; the other denies that man has a soul, or 
can ever attain immortality. Jesus Christ came to save 
man from sin and guilt and to make him morally pure 
and perfect; Gautama Buddha undertook to save him 
from pain, and only incidentally from moral evil. The 
one consummated his redeeming work by offering him- 
self a sacrifice for sin; the other repudiates the idea of 
sacrifice and knows no atonement. The Nazarene pro- 
claimed the kingdom of God and undertook to regene- 
rate the world; the Hindu set up a monastic order and 
exhorted men to forsake the world as evil and only evil 
in all its parts and relations. The one taught that the 
world is God's creation and life God's good gift, and 
that the sin and sorrow and pain in it are alien to its 
constitution, and shall at last be cast out utterly and 
forever; the other proclaims the essential evil of life, of 
all existence, and bids men crush out the innate desire 
for happiness and for immortality. 

In the philosophy of Christ, the family, the home, 
the natural affections, are God's gifts, and form the 
basis of the noblest moral development. The other 
stigmatizes them as the fountain of defilement, and 
commands its disciples to abandon them as the first step 
to the attainment of perfection. Christianity proclaims 
a Saviour who can reach man's uttermost need, temporal 



42 CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 

and spiritual. Buddhism bids every man be his own 
saviour and deliver himself by his own works. The 
former preaches a gospel of hope and points to a heaven 
of immortal blessedness. The latter sees nothing but 
gloom and darkness upon the horizon of the future, and 
its gospel offers as its highest attainment a Nirvana of 
apathy in this life, eventuating in total extinction of 
being. And yet we sympathize profoundly with Frede- 
rick Denison Maurice when he says, " Buddhism, 
rightly interpreted, is a prayer consciously or uncon- 
sciously uttered by three hundred millions of people for 
light " upon the deepest problems of the universe. It 
sought God, and not finding Him, it cried, " There is 
no God," And yet it seems to doubt its own conclu- 
sion. Through the ages we hear its agonizing question, 
Is there, after all, a God? Is there a " King and High 
Priest of the Universe — a man actually Divine?" It 
pondered human woe and human sin, and finding no 
escape and no atonement, it worked out its theory of 
escape from all, in suppressing desire and attaining 
Nirvana — apathy, unconsciousness, extinction. It is 
the human intellect vainly struggling, like Prometheus 
Vinctus, with the evils and problems of the universe. 
Its failure is eloquent of the powerlessness of man to 
save himself. Over the gulf of despair to which Budd- 
hism conducts us, we hear a voice proclaiming, " The 
world by wisdom knew not God." 

The logic of this splendid failure is that only by a di- 
vine revelation can man find out God or understand 
himself, or spell out his destiny. Christianity is the 
answer to the long prayer of the ages, of which Budd- 
hism has been the unconscious expression. The con- 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM. 43 

elusion of the whole matter is this: We cannot compare 
these two religions as a greater and a lesser light, but 
rather as light and darkness. We cannot give to Buddha 
the lofty title of "Light of Asia/' when upon the deepest 
problems of life and destiny his teaching leaves man in 
such Stygian gloom. No, the Light of Asia is the 
same who said to the Jews in the streets of Jerusalem, 
1800 years ago, " I am the light of the world," because 
to all races and to all ages, as to all classes and condi- 
tions of men, He and He alone gives the light of a hope 
full of immortality. 



II. 



CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IN THE 
MISSION FIELD. 



u There is a Science of Missions which we have need to 
learn . . . ' Not to destroy but to fulfil ' was the whole line 
of our Lord's ministry, taking all that the Jews hold sa- 
cred, and filling it full of a new meaning, developing it to 
the flower and fruitage that were enveloped in the husks. 
So did the Apostle Paul deal with the heathen of his day. 
He found in the words of the poet Aratus the dim dream 
of a divine Fatherhood, and he seized it and drew it out 
into a fuller revelation of the divine Sonship which 
may be ours through our share in the incarnation of the 
only Son. He praised the Godfearingness of the Athe- 
nian people as witnessed by their groping through count- 
less altars with names, to the one which was inscribed ' to 
the unknown God '. . . . This is the way of the true mis- 
sionary, seeking the gleam of a grain of truth amid the 
darkness of the mass of error in the religious systems of the 
non-Christian people to whom we go, and fanning it into 
the glow of the bright and shining 'Light of the knowledge 
of God in the face of Jesus Christ \ . . . We may not seek 
to cramp their intellectual manhood with the swaddling 
bands of our national formularies, or to torture their 
tongue with the shibboleths of our peculiarities of speech, 
but to adapt the worship which preserves and keeps alive 
the faith to their characteristics." — (From Bishop Doane's 
Sermon in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, June 16, 1900.) 



II. 

CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IK THE MISSION FIELD. 

It is impossible to exaggerate the gravity of the 
problem which confronts the Christian Church to-day 
in the great Mission Fields of the world. Never before 
has so great an opportunity presented itself. A 
hundred years ago the question was "How shall we 
gain access to the nations who still sit in darkness and 
the shadow of death?" India was closed by European 
hands against European* missionaries. China and 
Japan sat behind their impenetrable walls. Africa was 
an unknown continent. The isles of the sea were as 
yet inaccessible to the preachers of the Cross. To-day 
the walls have fallen down, as if by a blast from the 
trumpets of Jehovah, and the besieged city is open at 
every point to the soldiers of Christ. 

It is this which gives such momentous importance 
to the question of the strategy which is to be adopted 
in the Mission Field. The Church holds in her keeping 
the Gospel of Salvation. She is the guardian of the 
Tree of Life whose leaves are for the healing of the 
nations. Of what serious import, then, is the inquiry, 
" How shall she most skillfully apply so great a remedy? 
How most wisely dispense so great a blessing?" For 



48 CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

upon her wisdom in its application must depend, in the 
last resort, the efficacy of the Gospel. 

1. Among the elements of successful strategy in the 
Mission Field we believe this is one : a prominent 
place ought to be given to the larger and braver use 
of native Christian evangelists. Beyond doubt the 
gravest practical problem in connection with our mis- 
sionary work to-day is this: " Shall we rely upon for- 
eign missionaries to convert the nations to Christ, or 
shall we rather send these as the leaders of an army of 
evangelists to be recruited in the countries which we 
seek to conquer for our Lord? " Our contention is that 
Apostolic precedent is distinctly in favor of the latter 
plan. The Missions which the Apostles planted 
throughout the Eoman Empire were served by a native 
Clergy, and the foreign missionary was either only an 
occasional visitor to the churches, or else he was, like 
Titus in Crete, like Timothy at Ephesus, the leader 
and ruler of the body of native Christian laborers. It 
is evident that the Apostles were not afraid to commit 
the care of the Churches and the further propagation 
of the Gospel to the hands of their native converts. 
Nor did they hesitate to admit these to holy orders in 
a very short time after their conversion from heathen- 
ism. Eemember the story told by St. Luke of the first 
great missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas — how, 
after planting the Church in some of the chief towns 
of Pisidia and Lycaonia, upon their return through 
those same towns they " made choice of fit persons " 
from among the disciples (converted from heathenism 
only a few months before) and ordained them to the 
sacred ministry. 



CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IN THE MISSION FIELD. 49 

Now we ask if the men newly converted from the 
hideous immoralities and degrading superstitions of 
the heathenism that prevailed in Ephesus, and in 
Iconium and Derbe and Lystra, could be trusted to 
preach Christ's Gospel to their fellow-countrymen in 
the Apostolic age, why may not the native Christians 
of Wuchang and Shanghai, of Tokyo and Osaka, be 
intrusted to-day with a like responsibility? Cannot 
God the Holy Ghost enlighten, inspire, and sustain 
His converts in the nineteenth century as well as He 
did in the first century? 

It is true that our modern missionary bishops have 
to face a difficulty which Paul and Barnabas, Titus 
and Timothy, had not to contend with — that bristling 
array of canons which triumphantly bars the way 
against such hasty admission to Holy Orders as those 
first missionary bishops evidently practiced; for we sup- 
pose no one imagines that those presbyters " ordained 
in every city of Lycaonia and Pisidia " could have suc- 
cessfully stood the tests prescribed by Canons. 5 b Title 
L, of the Digest! 

Of one thing, however, we may be perfectly certain: 
If the great Goliaths of Chinese and Japanese and 
Hindu and African Paganism are to be overcome, the 
Church must put off her cumbrous armor of scholastic 
requirements, and trust to the sling and the stone of 
the truth as it is in Jesus, wielded even by striplings in 
learning. Earnest men, with souls aflame with love 
for Christ and for mankind, and tongues touched with 
a coal from the altar of God, may be trusted to preach 
the Gospel. 

Let such go forth as witnesses, as ambassadors, as 



50 CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

messengers of Kedemption, with no pretense to be 
scholars or theologians, but knowing by the heart the 
two great cardinal truths of Sin and Kedemption. It 
is an instructive fact that the most eminently success- 
ful Missionary Society in the Anglican Communion is 
that one which approximates most nearly to the Apos- 
tolic example on the point now insisted on. The 
English Church Missionary Society has almost as many 
native as foreign clergy in the field (the numbers 
January, 1900, were respectively 347 and 402), and its 
army of native lay teachers is over ten times as numerous 
as the foreign clergy (viz., 5,837). 

It is, again, a weighty consideration that the leaders 
in Missionary work, the officers of the army in the 
field — who ought to understand better than others the 
character of the campaign — are strongly impressed 
with the importance of a larger and bolder use of na- 
tive evangelists. Thus Bishop Crowther, speaking at 
the Missionary Conference in London two years ago, 
said: " I consider the best and most advantageous way 
of working on the west coast of Africa is to educate, as 
well as circumstances will allow, as many of the natives 
as possible, and send them amongst their own people, 
proclaiming the Gospel of Christ." * 

And at the Church Congress at Hull, in 1890 Bish- 
op Smythies, speaking from his experience in Eastern 
Africa, declared his firm conviction that, if Africans 
are to be converted in any large numbers, it will only 
be through the agency of the Africans themselves. 
Another eminent speaker at the Missionary Conference 

* Keport of Missionary Conference In London, 1888, Vol. 1., 
p. 258. 



CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IN THE MISSION FIELD. 51 

just alluded to declared it "an axiom of missionary 
policy that the evangelization of a great heathen land, 
like India, must be accomplished mainly through the 
agency of her own sons — men to whom the language 
of the country is their mother-tongue — who from 
childhood have been familiar with the feelings, the 
modes of thought, and the habits of the people, and 
to whom the climate is native and genial." Similar 
opinions were expressed at the recent (Ecumenical 
Missionary Conference in New York. 

2. A second, and a vital element of Christian strategy 
in this great warfare against Paganism concerns the sub- 
stance of our teaching. What is it the Christian mis- 
sionary goes out to foreign lands to preach? A moral 
system? An ecclesiastical system? A dogmatic system? 
Surely not; but something infinitely larger and more 
life-giving than any creed or system, even Christ Him- 
self; the personal Christ; the living Christ; the Christ 
who died for men, and who liveth for them; the Christ 
of the Gospels, and not the Christ of ancient or modern 
scholastic dogma. No doubt we have unconsciously 
Europeanized the image of Christ; and, recognizing 
this, it should be the study of the missionary to elimi- 
nate all foreign elements that may have become em- 
bedded in his conception of Our Lord, and to present 
Him as nearly as possible just as He appears on the 
page of the New Testament. He is the Son of Man — 
let us take care that we do not represent Him as the 
Son of a race, or of a civilization! When the Jesuit 
missionaries told the Chinese that Our Lord was a 
Chinaman, the impression produced on the minds of 
their hearers was nearer the truth than that which we 



52 CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

shall produce if we array the Prophet of Nazareth in 
the robe of our Western ideas and point to Him as the 
Christ. 

And let us beware, also, of obscuring the simplicity 
of the image of Christ by the elaborate definitions of a 
dogmatic theology. The famishing nations cry out for 
bread — for Him who is the Bread of Life, the Bread 
of the World. Do not let us give them, instead, a 
stone — a dead Christ — the Christ of dry metaphysical 
propositions. However true, they contain at best only 
the skeleton of the Christ. 

The doctrinal standards of Christendom, let us re- 
member, are, after all, breakwaters, builded to keep out 
the rising tides of false belief; and to impose them upon 
the nations of the world in advance of the appearance 
of the errors they were intended to check is an anachron- 
ism and a blunder. We might as well build a breakwater 
in the midst of the desert of Sahara, or transport Fast- 
net Light to the top of the Himalayas, as impose upon 
the South Sea Islanders, or the savages of Central 
Africa, or the red Indians of our Western Plains, the 
elaborate doctrinal standards of the sixteenth century, 
or even of the fourth. The question is not whether 
those dogmatic propositions are true, but whether they 
are adapted to the needs of the people whom we are 
seeking to enlighten. It may often be, especially 
among the disciples of Mohammed, that in departing 
from the simple statements of Holy Scripture as con- 
tained in the Apostles' Creed, we put a needless stumb- 
ling-block in the path of some of the children of Our 
Father who are groping for the Light. 

Certainly it is worth while to carefully consider this 



CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IN THE MISSION FIELD. 53 

question: If the Apostles prosecuted their great work 
of evangelization with such triumphant success over 
the entire extent of the Koman Empire with no other 
formula of belief but that simple one which was the 
original of our present Apostles' Creed; and if the 
primitive Church continued the great work of making 
disciples of all nations with like success until the 
fourth century, without either the Kicene or the 
Athanasian Creed, may not the Church of the nine- 
teenth century, in prosecuting her Missionary labors 
among peoples and tribes who have never heard of the 
controversies which those Creeds were designed to com- 
pose, or the heresies they were constructed to shut out, 
find it the wisest course to impose upon her converts 
no other formula of belief but that which is known as 
the Apostles' Creed? 

Of this, at all events, there can be no doubt — that to 
lead our converts in heathen lands into the thorny 
paths of modern, or mediaeval, or even ancient theo- 
logical controversies — except in cases where the de- 
velopment of thought plainly requires it — is something 
worse than a blunder. A good deal of our dogmatic 
theology which may be very useful to us, as certain 
glasses are of service to correct astigmatism, will be 
positively useless to them — nay, may even perplex and 
confuse their vision of God's truth. There is such a 
thing as theological astigmatism, and it is often con- 
genital; but it is most likely the result of centuries of 
controversy, to which the peoples to whom we carry 
Christ's Gospel are, happily, strangers. Why, then, 
should we insist on their wearing these theological 
glasses, which, however necessary for us, are entirely 



54 CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

useless, yes, positively mischievous, to those whose 
heredity and environment are quite different to our 
own? 

The present writer yields to no man in admiration of 
the apostolic zeal, the single-hearted consecration, the 
heroic constancy, the Christ-like self-sacrifice, of those 
heroes of the Cross who have guided the course and 
shaped the progress of Christian endeavor in the mis- 
sions of the churches to the heathen for a century past, 
from Henry Martyn and Judson down to Coleridge 
Patteson and Bishop Hannington. But this cannot 
blind him to the truth of the criticism that has been 
made upon our Protestant missions, that they have re- 
flected too much the later European types of thought. 
Nor can he withhold the opinion that if the genuine 
and healthy growth of Missions is to proceed as rapidly 
as the inherent fitness of the Gospel and the Church 
should lead us to anticipate, then one of the conditions 
precedent is this: that our missionary theology should 
be corrected so as to correspond with the simplicity — 
that is, the fulness, the universality, the cosmical 
character of the Faith once delivered to the Saints; cor- 
rected, we say, so as not to reflect European types of 
thought, earlier or later, but rather that pristine image 
of truth which the Gospels themselves present, and 
which belongs equally to all ages and to all races of 
men. 

3. We come to a third and still more vital strategic 
principle. It is that we send the right men to preach 
Christ to the unchristianized people of the Globe. 
Now it ought to be obvious, in the light of the history 
of modern Missions, that our best and ablest and most 



CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IN THE MISSION FIELD. 55 

broadly cultured men are needed in the mission field. 
Even among the lowest savages there is scope for the 
exercise of the highest talents and the best scholarship 
and the noblest chivalry, as the thrilling story of Cole- 
ridge Patteson's labors in Melanesia abundantly proves. 
But to grapple with the problem of wisely and effec- 
tively presenting Christianity to the highly intellectual 
races of the East — the world offers no more splendid 
arena for consecrated learning and genius than this ! 
It ought to fire the ambition of the most intellectual 
and most highly cultured of our young men in Amer- 
ica, as it is already doing in England. 

But this is not all. The men who go out to India 
and China and Japan to interpret to these great civil- 
ized peoples the glorious Gospel of Christ ought to be 
specially trained for their work. And part of their 
training should consist of a profound and patient study 
of the genius of the people to whom they are sent, of 
their literature also, of their philosophy, and of their 
religion. Depend upon it, the first condition of suc- 
cess there is the same as it is here in our land— to un- 
derstand the life and character of the people, and to 
know what they are thinking about, and what they 
really believe. 

Such a study will save the future missionary from 
some serious and fatal blunders. He will not commit 
the mistake of supposing that " everything non-Chris- 
tian is of the devil," or that "God and Spiritual truth 
are shut up in the Hebrew and Christian Sacred Books," 
or that among those people "who have been pondering 
the problems of life and death, God and the Universe 
for nearly thirty centuries," there is no knowledge of 



56 CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

God or of man's relation to Him." He will not sup- 
pose that, through all the vast reaches of past ages, and 
among all those countless millions of human beings, 
God has " left Himself without witness," or that that 
witness has been altogether without effect. 

And therefore he will not be surprised or perplexed 
by finding some grains of truth mingled with the mass 
of falsehood which those heathen systems contain, but 
will be prompt to recognize and utilize them in the 
presentation of the Gospel. 

Undoubtedly, the men whom we send forth to win the 
nations to the obedience of Christ should be capable of 
recognizing the elements of truth which even the most 
false and degrading systems contain; and they should 
know how to exhibit the Eevelation of the Gospel, 
not as the contradiction of all the previous religious 
convictions and aspirations of the heathen peoples, 
but rather as the fulfilment of all that was really good 
and true in the same, as God's answer to the cry for 
light and peace which those systems bore witness to, 
but could not satisfy. We want missionaries imbued 
with the spirit and gifted with the insight of the 
Apostle Paul, who saw in that inscription at Athens, 
" To the Unknown God," the expression of a longing 
for a better knowledge of God, and made use of it as a 
lever to remove the barriers to the reception of the 
Gospel. Yes, let the missionaries of the Cross be 
moved with a deep sympathy for the ignorance and the 
darkness of those to whom they come with the message 
of light and life; but let them look to find in their liter- 
ature, in their philosophy, even in their idolatrous re- 
ligions a groping after the true God. And as St. Paul 



CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IN THE MISSION FIELD. 57 

did not scruple to acknowledge that Athenian altar as 
an expression of worship toward God, so let it be freely 
acknowledged to-day that even in darkest heathendom 
men may feel after God and find Him. 

Is there, then, any substitute for the Gospel of re- 
deeming love ? Is there any religion that can rival the 
Keligion of Christ ? God forbid ! Christianity is the 
only Absolute Keligion, the only Universal Religion, 
the only religion that is without spot or blemish — all 
from God — all divine. It admits of no compromise 
with any other system. But we do not asperse any of 
these facts by acknowledging the germs of truth in other 
religions, any more than we dim the glory of the mid- 
day sun by acknowledging that there was some light in 
the cold starlit sky. 

Let it then be repeated with added emphasis : When 
the missionary of the Cross stands face to face with the 
falsities, the abominations, the cruelties, the degrad- 
ing superstitions of heathenism, let him not forget that 
even in this midnight darkness there may be some rays 
of light, and that the pitiful and gracious Spirit of 
God may even here meet the souls that yearn after 
truth, and lead them to their Father. He need not 
think, nay, he must not think — it would a be sacrilege 
to think — that all those hundreds of millions of human 
beings now living in ignorance of the gospel of Christ, 
and all those unnumbered multitudes who have lived 
and died in the same ignorance, have had no light, no 
guidance, no help from the Spirit of God, and so have 
perished without hope. He will remember that these 
debased and ignorant multitudes are still the children 
of God, and that the entire record of the Divine con- 



58 CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

duct toward man in the Scriptures shows that He is 
very compassionate to the ignorance of His children, 
and that he condescends to teach them by the lowliest 
and the least likely instruments. He will ponder the 
great truth which the very prince of the Apostles only 
learned by means of a revelation from heaven, and 
which the Church of our day has not even yet fairly 
grasped, that " in every nation he that feareth God and 
worketh righteousness is accepted ; " and in its light he 
will expect to find even in the darkest regions of the 
heathen world souls that are groping after God, and 
that are accepted by Him, in spite of all their darkness 
and error of belief. Yes, if, as St. Augustine said, 
there were " Christians before Christ/' he will expect 
to find Christian^ after Christ, who are such, though 
they have never heard His name. For, though it is true 
that there is none other name under heaven whereby 
we must be saved but the name of Jesus Christ, yet as- 
suredly there will be multitudes saved by His redeem- 
ing grace, who have never heard His name, or listened 
to the story of His Cross and Passion. 

Upon the marble slab which covers the sacred dust 
of Livingstone in Westminster Abbey, are inscribed 
the words of our Lord, " Other sheep I have which are 
not of this fold. " We cannot but think that it would con- 
tribute greatly to the true growth of the Church in mis- 
sionary lands if every missionary went forth to his work 
with this great utterance of the Master engraven on his 
heart, so that he might expect to find the sheep of 
Christ even among the adherents of erroneous creeds 
and the disciples of false religions. How much better 
fitted will that Christian teacher be to win souls for 



CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IN THE MISSION FIELD. 59 

Christ, who has the insight to recognize the fruits of 
the Spirit even under the strange garments of heathen 
superstition and heathen customs, and who can sympa- 
thize with the doubts and difficulties of the honest 
seeker after truth, though he be a disciple of Confu- 
cius, though he hold the creed of Buddha, or though he 
be one of those children of the desert who three times 
a day kneels beside his camel and asks pardon and 
grace of Allah. Such a teacher of the religion of 
Christ will, like the great Apostle to the Gentiles, seek 
to discover points of contact between the literature, 
the philosophy, the worship of the heathen, and the 
religion of Christ, and will feel that he is commis- 
sioned, not to introduce for the first time the knowl- 
edge and the worship of God, but rather to rebuke the 
falsities of their worship, to correct the errors of their 
thinking concerning God, and to declare Christianity 
as the answer to the religious aspirations and longings 
which exist behind all the falsities and abominations 
of the religions of mankind. In a word, he will not 
hesitate to acknowledge even their idolatry as a grop- 
ing after God, and their superstitious rites as an ex- 
pression of worship to the Divine, making the great 
Apostle's words his own, " whom ye ignorantly worship, 
him declare I unto you." 

And finally, to such a teacher of our holy Religion 
the revived activity of Hinduism, of Buddhism, and of 
Mohammedanism, will be looked upon as a sign of 
promise rather than as a ground of discouragement; 
for, as the present Bishop of Durham, Dr. Westcott 
has said, the stir of these old religions will be " a sign 
that men are beginning to think of those problems of 



60 CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

humanity to which Christianity alone can offer an an- 
swer." * 

These positions are recognized and confirmed by the 
experience of many of the most devoted missionaries 
who have made a profound study of the literature, the 
philosophy, and the religion of the East. They tell 
us that they can appeal to the poets of India against 
idolatry, as St. Paul appealed to the Greek poets in 
attestation of the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God. 
They tell us that they can prove from the Chinese 
classical books that man is sinful and deserves punish- 
ment for his sin. They tell us that the literature of 
the East contains many spiritual truths with which 
Christianity has affinity; and, what is most remarkable 
and most important, that there is in embryo among the 
Hindus, a doctrine of God manifest in human form. 
In illustration we quote a poem from which the Eev. G. 
M. Cobban read an extract at the London Missionary 
Conference : " Why should Grace take the human form 
to save us?" and the poet answers : "Just as a hun- 
ter takes a deer and exhibits it that he may catch a 
deer; just as the fowler takes a bird of that class which 
he wishes to catch; just so Grace, wanting to catch man, 
took the form of a man." 

The same speaker quoted the following passage from 
another poet who is seeking to enforce spiritual wor- 
ship : " You are going to worship, are you not ? And 
you have brought flowers from your garden, and you 
are going to offer them, but that idol is not God, an4 
these are not the right flowers. God is a Spirit. God 
wants a flower, but the flower that He wants is the 

* Speech in Exeter Hall, May 3, 1887. 



CHRISTIAN STB A TEG Y IN THE MISSION FIELD. 61 

flower that grows in the garden of your heart, the 
flower of love. That is the flower you must bring." * 

We know not what others may think, but for ourselves 
we are bound to say that we recognize in such utterances 
the voice of the same Spirit of Truth who speaks in 
the Christian Scriptures. 

4. One thought more: Among the vital elements 
of a wise strategy in the Mission Field this must 
surely be included, that the ultimate purpose of our 
missions be not to establish a new branch of the An- 
glican Communion, but rather to plant the seed of 
the Kingdom in the soil, and let it develop a form of 
Christianity suitable to the genius of the people of the 
particular country in which it is planted. 

Anglicanism,be it remembered, is at best but a partial 
expression of the manifold wisdom of God which is in- 
carnate in Jesus Christ. However true, however beau- 
tiful, however admirable, it reflects but a segment of 
the great orb of light and grace which Christianity 
reveals. The Spectrum of Truth as it is in Jesus, 
contains seven colors; and Anglicanism, though it may 
catch and hold those colors which are most restful to 
our "Western eyes, may not embody those which are 
best suited to other latitudes and to other peoples. And 
surely our commission is to give the light of the knowl- 
edge of the glory of God to the peoples of the earth in 
its absolute simplicity, not colored by any national or 
individual peculiarities. Again we say it, the Gospel 
in its simplicity is the Gospel in its fulness, in its un- 
dimmed power. It is the light of Truth in its sevenfold 

* Report of the London Missionary Conference, 1888, Vol. II. , 
p. 98. 



62 CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

being. And it is this which we are put in trust with, 
to dispense to the nations of the world. We have no 
commission to transport the structure of our Western 
Christianity and uprear it on every foreign shore. 

But must we not be careful to transmit the Faith once 
delivered to the saints unmutilated and uncorrupted? 
Undoubtedly we are bound to guard both the Faith 
and the Order of the Church. The great fundamental 
verities of the Faith as contained in the Apostles' 
Creed, and the threefold ministry which we have 
received from the Apostles, in these we cannot, in 
loyalty to our trust, permit any alteration. But beyond 
these limits we should allow in our mission fields the 
utmost freedom of development, both in ritual and 
ecclesiastical order, according to differences of race and 
climate, and temperament, and mental culture. The 
function of Christian missions is described in the words 
of the Master, "Behold, a sower went forth to sow " 
Our business is to sow the seed, and let it grow accord- 
ing to the peculiarities of the soil in which it is 
planted. And if we follow the apostolic precedent, we 
shall make it a primary aim to build up in each great 
race a national Christianity which shall be suited to the 
country, because an expression and, to some extent, a 
creation of the peculiar genius of the people. Eead 
the Acts of the Apostles and you will find that St. Paul's 
method was to plant the gospel and let it grow. His 
missions did not wear the exotic aspect which often char- 
acterizes ours. They grew in the soil, and were nourish- 
ed by natives of the soil. The weakness of our foreign 
missions is that they are so foreign,— they present Chris- 
tianity to the nations as the religion of the foreigner. 



CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IN THE MISSION FIELD. 63 

Their day of power will dawn when they put off this 
foreign aspect, not by a sham conformity to native 
dress and manners, but by a genuine incorporation of 
the spirit and genius of the people whom they seek to 
convert. In illustration we quote the language of an- 
other: " I must confess that as I wandered about in 
the different mission fields . . . my heart did yearn to 
see something which really did belong to the native 
people in the way of a church, not Gothic structures 
such as would commend themselves to any of our own 
people in England, but not adapted, as I thought, to 
the ideas of the people. . . . We want to see something 
that really comes from the minds of the people, and 
will represent their ideas of what the house of God 
should be. One day, on the hills of Santhalia, I did at 
last come across a place of worship which evidently 
had not been touched in any way by a European, and I 
felt I could thank God for it. # 

The history of the development of church architec- 
ture may stand as a parable of the development of the 
Church. For, as each of the great church-building 
ages developed a style of its own, yet all remained true 
to the great principles of the art, so it may well be that 
each age, but especially each race and people, may de- 
velop the Church along lines and by ideals of its own, 
yet all in harmony with the essential principles of the 
faith and the apostolic norm of the Church. And if 
we ask for an image of the Catholic Church of all the 
ages, we shall not find it in a cathedral like that noble 
one of Salisbury, which, being the work of one archi- 
tect and of one generation, is a pure example of one 

* Keport of London Missionary Conference, Yol. II. , p. 401. 



64 CHRISTIAN STRATEGY IN THE MISSION FIELD. 

style of architecture— the Early English — but rather in 
one of those even grander piles which embody various 
different styles, and whose moss-covered stones tell the 
beholder that he is looking upon the work of many 
different ages and many different master-minds, all of 
which have striven to give fitting expression, each in 
its own way, to the great thought of the worship of 
God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 



III. 

THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST AND THE 

PSEUDO-GOSPELS OF THE 

RATIONALIST AND THE 

DOGMATIST. 



"Erepov Evayythtov, b om eartv aXko. 

—St. Paul. 

" I am resolved either to have no Gospel at all, or to 
accept that which is given me." — Horace Bushnell. 

"Mr. Matthew Arnold combined a fervent zeal for the 
Christian Religion with a not less boldly avowed deter- 
mination to transform it beyond the possibility of recog- 
nition by friend or foe " — W. E. Gladstone. 

" The Christian teacher cannot master the Faith on 
the side of knowledge till he has made the universe its in- 
terpreter. . . . It is through the sciences that we may hope 
to gain, as the result of patient and truthful study, 
glimpses of the vital harmony of the cosmos, which is the 
first corollary of our faith." — 

The Bishop of Durham (Dr. Westcott.) 



in. 

THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS OF 
THE RATIONALIST AND THE DOGMATIST. 

It is now nearly twenty years since that great prelate 
Archbishop Tait surveying the battlefield of the Faith 
from the eminence of his exalted position as primate 
of the Church of England, and scanning the horizon 
with a glance of penetrating wisdom — the fruit of his 
great abilities and his long experience — gave it as his 
deliberate judgment that the chiefest peril to Chris- 
tianity in the coming generation was to be looked for 
not without but within her pale, in a subtle form of 
rationalistic teaching. Reviewing successively the 
ranks of Atheism and of Deism and of Theism he 
pointed out with great skill how their onset might be 
repelled ; but he had no fear that the coming genera- 
tion of his countrymen would be led captive by these 
foes. He considered also the revival here and there of 
Mediaeval and Koman doctrines and practices; but 
though as is well known, he had exerted his influence 
for their suppression, he was of opinion that " almost 
their chief danger lay in the reaction they were sure 
to produce." * Turning then to a scrutiny of Eation- 
alism, he contemplated with the gravest solicitude 

* " The Church of the Future," by A. Campell Tait, Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury. Maemillian & Co., London, 1881. p. 89. 



68 THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 

its deadly influence upon the Church of the Future 
through the introduction under the name of " an im- 
proved and more rational Christianity/' of a form of 
teaching which really eliminates the distinctive ele- 
ments of New Testament Christianity, evaporates by its 
critical processes, its chief est power, and leaves as the 
residuum "a meagre sublimated" thing which is dis- 
tinctly different from the genuine gospel once com- 
mitted to the saints. 

Let us state the case in his own words : " There is, 
I hold, real ground to fear lest the tendencies of this 
age result in the prevalence of a lax view of Christian 
doctrine unlike anything with which our country has 
in former times been familiar. Presenting itself under 
the guise of an improved and more rational Christian- 
ity, speaking with the greatest respect of the Lord 
Jesus Christ and His Apostles; professing to regard 
them as great benefactors of the human race, and 
even admitting that the historical Christ is in some 
sense a wonderful manifestation of God brought near to 
man, it virtually substitutes a new in the place of the 
old genuine Gospel." * 

The danger thus delineated is one which it behoves 
Christian thinkers carefully to consider not less now 
than when it was pointed out by the Archbishop. 
Never perhaps since the day of Pentecost was the 
Christian Faith confronted with so mighty a confeder- 
acy of foes. Yet none of them is so much to be feared 
as the Spirit of Eationalism. Whoever will widely and 
wisely scan the field of conflict must, we venture to 



* Id., pp. 89-90. 



THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 69 

think, see reason to conclude with Dr. Tait, that neither 
materialistic Atheism without, nor Komanizing and 
mediaeval influences within, the Church are so fraught 
with peril to the Faith as that subtle spirit of unbe- 
lief which, in the name of Christianity itself, and under 
pretence of refining and purifying the Gospel changes 
its essential character and empties it of its redeeming 
power. 

We describe it as a Spirit of Unbelief, because it is 
not crystallized in any one definite form. It is not a 
party in the Church. It can hardly be called a school 
of thought. There is no party and there is no school 
of thought among us which can fairly be described as 
its incarnation. It assumes manifold forms and 
phases. It tinges the thought and the teaching of 
some loyal and. devoted preachers of the Gospel, who 
have given asylum to some phase of this evil spirit 
without perceiving that they are harboring a deadly foe 
to the Truth they love. Others open the door more 
widely to its influence, and surrender step by step the 
truths of the Gospel to its sway. In its more developed 
forms it is akin to the old Unitarianism, and though 
many of its advocates are earnest and devoted men with 
pure aims and high ideals, following after holiness and 
communion with God, it remains true that the princi- 
ples they advocate are dangerous to the life of Chris- 
tianity and the gospel they preach is not the gospel 
which St. Paul gloried in as "the power of God unto 
salvation." 

It is our purpose to indicate some of the characteris- 
tic features of this gospel of rationalism, and to turn 
then to consider how it may best be counteracted. 



70 THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 

1. Now the central principle of this rationalistic 
Christianity is found in its assertion of the supremacy 
of the human reason. It is not that it asserts the 
reasonableness of the religion of Christ ; it is not that it 
vindicates for reason the province of interpreter of the 
revelation ; it is not even that it maintains that in the 
nature of the case there can be no real contradiction 
between Eeason and Eevelation ; but its fault is this, 
that it distinctly makes the human reason the judge 
not merely of the credentials of Eevelation, but of its 
entire substance. There is indeed a sense in which 
reason may be said to be a judge of even the contents 
of Eevelation, as Bishop Butler maintained, in the 
supposed case of its containing precepts contrary to 
fundamental and immutable morality. But the wise 
caution with which he limited this principle is forgot- 
ten by the teachers referred to, who bring the whole 
field of Eevelation under the jurisdiction of the reason, 
thus in effect making it the measure as well as the 
judge, and reaffirming the old Stoic maxim, "Man, 
the measure of all things." 

Schleiermacher (whose great services to the cause of 
religion ought not, however, to be depreciated) long 
ago maintained that only those parts of the Bible were 
to be accepted as true which were in harmony with the 
utterances of the devout consciousness. But one of 
the writers in the volume of u Scotch Sermons," (1880) 
goes much farther and claims for "the progress of 
history" the right to "modify the New Testament 
Eevelation." And an able and devout thinker of our 
own country, while rightly insisting that " a full 
adjustment between reason and Christianity is steadily 



THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 71 

to be sought," * pushes the claims of the former, 
so far that he really exalts it above Kevelation. In 
his zeal to assert what is a great truth, that God 
reveals Himself not only in the Bible but also in his- 
tory and in man, and in the material creation, f he 
seems to bring down the Biblical revelation to the level 
of the rest, forgetting that it was the obscurity and 
imperfection of these natural revelations that rendered 
necessary the supernatural one which God has given us 
in Holy Scripture. Doubtless every part of the Chris- 
tian revelation is " in itself reasonable," and it should 
be the task of consecrated thought to strive to pene- 
trate and to unfold its reasonableness. But it is sub- 
versive of the very idea of Kevelation to claim that we 
accept and believe the several truths of Christianity 
upon that ground. Much that we as devout Christians 
believe, we believe upon the authority of Christ, and 
not because we have been able to perceive its reasona- 
bleness, though if it were plainly contrary to reason we 
could not accept it. Here, surely, is a vital question : — 
" Is there heard in the New Testament a voice which is 
to be listened to with absolute reverence, and to be believed 
and obeyed without question or cavil t" If there is, then 
it is an authority above reason. If there is not, then 
reason, not Christ, is the supreme arbiter of truth. 
But, Dr. Munger, in holding that "we accept the 
Christian faith because of the reasonableness of its en- 
tire substance," J seems to embrace the latter alterna- 
tive, and stands committed to the position that we can 

* " The Freedom of Faith," by Theodore T. Munger, (1884), 
p. 11. 
t Id., p. 8. % Id., p. 13. 



72 THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 

not believe any doctrine of the Christian faith unless 
and until we can perceive it to be reasonable. Now, 
when so able and devout and Christian a writer com- 
mits himself to a position so fundamentally rationalis- 
tic as this, the need for caution against the spirit of 
rationalism cannot be too greatly emphasized. Wiser 
and profounder are the words with which Frederic 
Myers closes his volume on " The Bible and Theol- 
ogy" : "There can be nothing more true and more 
holy — more emphatically divine — than the mind which 
was in Christ Jesus as exhibited in our New Testa- 
ment. Let the ultimate appeal then be to that ; and 
be sure that wherever this book [of mine] speaks not 
according to that, it is because there is no light in 
it." * 

Upon another point we contrast the teaching of 
these two thinkers. Dr. Munger regards God's revela- 
tions (including that of the Bible) " as under a process 
still enacting, and not as under a finality." But 
Frederic Myers writes as follows : " Thus the Bible 
vindicates itself as the Law and the Gospel of our race — 
as the earliest and the last communication from 
Heaven — as all that ever has been, or ever - shall be, 
supernaturally written for our learning — as at once the 
final revelation of God and the whole duty of man." f 

2. The spirit of rationalism shows itself again in the 
tendency of much of the religious thought of our time 
to eliminate the supernatural from Christianity. Now 
to correct antiquated definitions of miracle; e. g., that 
it is a suspension, or violation, of the laws of nature ; 



* p. 453. t Id., p. 185. 



THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 73 

to exhibit miracle under the conception of a higher law ; 
to suggest the naturalness of the supernatural ; to 
point out the different evidential value of miracles in 
the 20th and the 1st century ; to insist on concentrat- 
ing the battle for miracle upon the chiefest of mira- 
cles, the Resurrection of Christ — this was the part of 
a wise defender of the Faith. But the teachers now 
referred to, if they do not reject the supernatural them- 
selves, maintain that it forms no part of the essence of 
Christianity, which in their judgment may be accepted 
as a Revelation from God, while everything miraculous 
connected with it is wholly rejected. Nay it is even 
held that to suppose that the influence of Christianity 
" can be dangerously affected by the denial of miracle 
is to misapprehend its power and essence." * 

The chief argument by which this position is de- 
fended is that the natural history of the subject shows 
that " miracles belong to the poetry of Religion/' f 
and that the origin of the gospels, "out of a mass of 
floating tradition " at a considerable distance in point 
of time from the events they record, renders it over-' 
whelmingly probable that the miracles are a later 
growth— a mythical addition to the actual events. 

But such reasoning is overthrown by a consideration 
of the testimony of the Apostle Paul. His Epistles— 
those four which even the most extreme and destruc- 
tive criticism is compelled to admit to be genuine- 
are as emphatic as the gospels in bearing witness to 
miracle, and this testimony of theirs cannot be dis- 



*Scotch Sermons (1880), p. 82. 
t Id., p. 79. 



74 THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 

posed of by the mythical explanation, for the reason 
that the time necessary for the formation of the myth is 
wanting. In fact there is absolutely no appreciable 
period of time between some of the miracles reported by 
St. Paul and the report itself, for he regards miracles 
as the signs of an apostle which were ever and anon be- 
ing wrought at the time of his writing. Hence, to use 
Auberlen's words, " They who deny the miracles must 
give up the mythical explanation, and fall back upon 
the natural, old rationalistic one ; they must send the 
Apostle Paul to school with his more enlightened name- 
sake Paulus at Heidelberg." * 

But, upon any explanation that may be suggested, if 
miracles were not actually wrought, if, above all, the 
miracle w 7 hich the Apostle describes as instrumental in 
his conversion was a delusion, then the life, the zeal, 
the labors, the marvelous, yea, matchless influence of 
St. Paul over the world, was based upon self-deception. 
In short if miracles are denied "the whole revelation of 
the Old and New Testaments rests upon a series of self- 
deceptions and illusions." 

We must conclude therefore that miracle belongs not 
to the accidental, the secondary, the unimportant part 
of Christianity, but to its very substance and essence. 
The issue is clear : The Christian Eeligion rests upon 
a basis of miracle, and with it must stand or fall. 
Easier were it to sever body and soul without destroying 
life, than to separate the supernatural from Christian- 
ity without destroying its life. They who " think the 
rustic cackle of their bourg the murmur of the world " 
may characterize this statement as narrow or bigoted or 

* " Divine Revelation,' ' p. 43. 



THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 75 

intolerant ; but it is a conclusion which cannot be 
successfully impeached. 

The example of Strauss may be quoted in confir- 
mation of this statement. In his preface to the first 
edition of his " Life of Jesus " (1835) he wrote, " The 
essence of the Christian Religion is perfectly indepen- 
dent of my criticism. The supernatural birth of 
Christ, His miracles, His resurrection and ascension 
remain eternal truths, whatever doubts may be cast on 
their reality as historical facts " * * * * (p. xi). Setting 
out thus with the denial of the objective reality of the 
miraculous basis of Christianity, he ended, a generation 
later, (in " The old faith and the new ") with a total 
rejection of the religion of Christ in favor of the creed 
of materialistic atheism. 

3. Another and that a palmary instance of the 
rationalistic method is furnished by much of the 
Higher Criticism of our time. Now, there is a true 
science of criticism, whose utterances must be re- 
ceived with profound respect, and whose labors should 
be followed with earnestness and candor; but there is 
also a sort of criticism which has no such claims upon 
us. It comes to the study of the Bible biased by its in- 
veterate prepossessions. It sets out from the assumption 
that there can be no true prophecy, no real miracle; 
and hence it is a canon of its work that every record of 
miracle or prophecy is discredited in advance. But it 
is manifest that criticism conducted on these princi- 
ples cannot be impartial. It plays with loaded dice. 
Its decisions on many points are registered in advance 
of the trial and independently of the evidence. Its 
critical investigations, so far as those parts of the nar- 



76 THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 

rative are concerned which embody predictions or mir- 
acles, are but the work of a special pleader, a hired 
advocate, who has his conclusion given him in advance. 
This animadversion applies with grave emphasis to the 
work of the three men who may be considered the 
real masters of the present critical school, we mean 
Eeuss, Kuenen, and Wellhausen. Their conclusions 
are largely based on a priori assumptions against the 
supernatural. This is the real source of much of their 
work, which in this respect strongly resembles the 
work of Schenkel, Strauss, Kenan, and Baur, in another 
field. Their disciples, who maintain the historicity of 
the Bible and accept the supernatural, have neverthe- 
less not sufficiently recognized the real basis and in- 
spiration of the critical theories they have accepted, 
— viz., the anti-supernatural assumption. 

The critical conclusions of that illustrious biblical 
scholar, Ewald, are vitiated by his adoption of the 
canon of criticism just stated. He speaks of Moses as 
a prophet, but not in the full biblical sense, for he de- 
nies all supernatural revelation and inspiration. The 
prophet in his view is self-deceived, since he ascribes 
to an extraneous divine source that which really pro- 
ceeds from the religious element within him, from a 
" wonderful primeval energy of the spirit pervading all 
humanity." Even the law, which Israel believed it re- 
ceived from Jehovah on Sinai, was the product of Is- 
rael's own mind ; it "proceeded (says Ewald) from the 
purest aims and noblest aspirations of a young nation in 
the sunshine of a rare moment in the world's history." 

Thus does this great scholar invert the whole history 
of Israel, representing it as a natural development, 



THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 77 

generically the same as that of the heathen nations 
around it ; its religion the offspring of the national 
mind, not a revelation from God ; an evolution from 
below, not a communication from above. 

Now, criticism based on such principles, no matter by 
what great names it may be supported, must be pro- 
nounced unscientific, since it reaches its conclusions 
not by an induction from the facts, but by a predeter- 
mined assumption. No genius, or learning, or schol- 
arship, can justify such a proceeding. Hence, the 
conclusions of this school of critics upon all points 
which are affected by this vicious assumption must be 
rejected in the name of criticism itself. 

But shall we, therefore, treat all critics as enemies of 
the faith ? Surely, such a course would be as unprotes- 
tant as it would be unreasonable. Bather, let us " take 
our stand'with the evangelical critics of Europe against 
the rationalistic critics, and conquer the latter by a 
more profound critical interpretation of the literature, 
the history, and the religion of the Bible ; " nor let us 
hesitate to spoil the Egyptians, by appropriating to 
the uses of believing criticism the rich treasures of 
learning accumulated by these great scholars in their 
one-sided investigation of the Bible. Another Primate, 
the late Archbishop Benson, has indeed said that the 
Church is bringing home to her garners rich sheaves of 
grain from the once dreaded field of the Higher Criti- 
cism. We need not fear for the result of the freest in- 
vestigation, if only it is conducted on truly scientific 
principles. It may overturn some long cherished con- 
ceptions of the structure and composition of certain 
parts of the record ; it may expose the spuriousness of 



78 THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 

some infinitesimal parts of the Scripture, a result which, 
in certain passages, the Eevised New Testament has 
already registered and made familiar; but the Bible as 
a whole will emerge from the trial unscathed ; and not 
only so, but like gold tried in the fire, it will shine 
with a brighter lustre than before. Well has it been 
said in this connection that " distrust of truth is a 
very advanced form of infidelity as to the Providence 
of God." 

What Herder said long ago of the earlier chapters of 
the book of Genesis may confidently be applied to the 
Scriptures as a whole : " Its sound has gone out into 
all the earth, and its very words into all lands! 
Whence is it that the remotest nations have their 
knowledge of it? How comes it that they built on it 
religions and mythologies: that it is, in fact, the sim- 
plest foundation of all their arts, institutions and 
sciences? If from it, things may be made plain and 
clear as sunlight that are as chaos, as a riddle, and dark 
as night when it is denied, or when men prate of their 
hypotheses: if from this a whole antiquity may be re- 
duced to order and a line of light be drawn through 
the most confused events of the early history of nations 
— light which, like that in Correggio's picture, shines 
from the cradle of the race — what then have ye to say, 
ye manufacturers of myths, ye who would profane the 
revelation of God?" 

To these words of a Christian philosopher let us add 
the utterance of a great historian. " The old Testa- 
ment alone " says Niebuhr, " is an exception to patri- 
otic untruth; it never conceals or passes over a national 
reverse or error. Its truthfulness is the highest thing 



THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 79 

in history, even for him who does not believe in in- 
spiration. At the same time I must claim for the Old 
Testament the minutest accuracy as well as the utmost 
truthfulness of all our sources of History." 

4. Yet another illustration of the spirit of rationalism 
is found in the disposition on the part of some modern 
teachers to magnify the words of Christ to the neglect 
and even to the contempt of his acts. In the eyes of 
these thinkers the chief value and virtue of Christian- 
ity lies in its ethical teaching. Its doctrines are of 
secondary importance. They are even a blemish upon 
its fair surface. Accordingly the Sermon on the 
Mount, embodying as it does so much of Christ's 
simple moral teaching, is exalted to a position of 
supreme importance. It is made the radiant centre and 
sun of the Christian system. It comprises in their eyes 
all that is essential to Christianity. 

One of the latest instances of this subtle rationalism is 
furnished by a popular writer, whose pictures of Scotch 
life have fascinated two continents, but whose writings 
scarcely justify a similar reputation in the sphere of 
theology. He magnifies the Sermon on the Mount, as 
if it were the complete statement and not the introduc- 
tion merely to the doctrine of Christ. The Christian 
Creeds do not meet the views of " Ian McLaren." He 
does not like them. He tells us " they have nothing 
to do with character, they do not afford an idea of 
character; they do not ask pledges of character; they 
have no place in their construction for character." He 
would substitute what he calls an Ethical Creed. 

Up to the year 1896 " no church has had the courage 
to formulate an Ethical Creed," but at last a man has 



80 THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 

come who will wipe out this reproach ! The author of 
" The Bonnie Briar Bush " is equal to the crisis. He 
has given the world an Ethical Creed which will at- 
tract all mankind. From north, south, east, and west, 
men will eagerly hasten to take refuge in Ian McLar- 
en's Creed, which has been purged clean of dogmas, 
and adorned with the fine linen of purely ethical 
ideas ! 

But stay — what is the first article of this Ethical 
Creed? " I believe in the Fatherhood of God! * Surely 
that is perilously like the old Catholic formula, " I 
believe in God the Father Almighty. " What has that 
to do with character? And what right has an Ethical 
Creed to exclude the great author of "The Data of 
Ethics " just because he cannot accept this old Bible 
conception of the Fatherhood of God. 

In fact, the Sermon on the Mount comprises much 
more of Christianity than the rationalist would wish to 
accept. If it is an epitome of Christian morality, it is 
also an epitome of much at any rate of Christian doc- 
trine. It teaches among other things these: the doctrine 
of the divine authority of the old Testament — the doc- 
trine of providence — the doctrine of prayer — the doc- 
trine of sin — the doctrine of the remission of sin — the 
doctrine of a future judgment conducted by Christ as 
the Judge of the Universe — and the awful doctrine of 
the retributions of hell. If we enlarge our view and 
take in all the words of Christ, we shall find that they 
assert every fundamental doctrine of the Christian Faith 
including its deepest mysteries, the Incarnation, the 
Atonement, the Kesurrection, the Trinity. The vital 
and central position assigned by the Christian Church 



THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 81 

in all ages to the death of Christ, as not a mere incident 
in the history of redemption, but as in some profound 
sense its crown and consummation, is more than justi- 
fied by two memorable utterances of Jesus; viz., " The 
Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minis- 
ter and to give his life a ransom for many ; " and, " I, if 
He lifted up, will draw all men unto me; " as well as by 
the words of Institution in the Lord's Supper—" This is 
my blood of the New Testament which is shed for you 
and for many for the remission of sins/' 

With the late Aubrey L. Moore, one of the keenest 
intellects of our generation, we are profoundly con- 
vinced that " it is impossible to defend Christianity on 
the basis of anything less than the whole of the 
Church's Creed." * 

Any attempt to tamper with the Apostles' or the 
Nicene Creed, to adulterate its doctrines, or to nullify 
them by strained and unnatural interpretations must 
be met upon the threshold as an enemy of the Faith. 

Thus the fibres of doctrine, and let us add of mir- 
acle as well, interpenetrate the discourses of Jesus ; 
and the Christian apologist need ask of the critic no 
more than the genuineness of the great discourses re- 
corded in the Gospels, in order to establish the whole 
circle of essential Christian Doctrine. 

Such then are some of the features by which we may 
recognize that subtle spirit of Eationalism which is in- 
corporating itself more and more in the religious 
thinking of our time. It is accepted by some who are 
far from intending to oppose the Christian Eeligion 

* " Science and the Faith," p. xii. 



82 THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 

or to be disloyal to its authority ; but it is nevertheless 
the deadly foe of the Christianity of Christ, and the 
gospel which it preaches is distinctly not the Gospel 
which the Apostles preached and which has in all the 
ages since won the greatest triumphs among men 

The Christian thinker must indeed be imbued with 
the spirit of tolerance and of liberality, but before all 
things he must be loyal to His Divine Master, and a 
faithful steward of the " mysteries of God " intrusted to 
his keeping. That spirit of loyalty and fidelity will be 
an absolute barrier in the way of compromising any of 
the great truths of revelation which have been reviewed 
above. Here, if anywhere, the prophetic word of ex- 
hortation finds place, " Keep the munition, watch the 
way, make thy loins strong, fortify thy power mightily." 
The sufficiency and supreme authority of the Holy 
Scripture in the realm of doctrine and morals, its fi- 
nality as a Divine Revelation of religious and ethical 
truth, and the immutabilty of the Gospel once delivered 
to the saints — these must, at any cost of labor and of 
conflict, be maintained, because to do otherwise would 
be to question the wisdom and the truth and the au- 
thority of Him to whom as the Lord and Redeemer 
implicit trust and obedience are due. 

Equally vital to the Christian position is the main- 
tenance of a genuine revelation, as a light from above, 
not as an ignis fatuus flashing up from the depths of the 
human consciousness ; and with it a real spirit of proph- 
ecy speaking through holy men of old moved by the 
Holy Ghost.; and a true descent of the supernatural into 
the sphere of the natural in the miraculous person and 
works of Jesus Christ. Above all must emphasis be 



THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 83 

given to the doctrine of " Christ and Him Crucified " 
and risen from the dead as the hope of a fallen and 
sinful world. The holiness of God, — the sinfulness and 
guilt of man — the redemption of Christ — perfect remis- 
sion and forgiveness " through faith in His Blood " — 
His resurrection from the dead in the same body 
that was laid in the tomb,* — these are truths with- 
out which the gospel is shorn of its power and its vir- 
tue ; and nothing else, neither learning nor zeal, 
neither wisdom nor might, neither ethical precepts, 
nor practical benevolence, can atone for their loss, or 
fill the great void which the human soul must feel 
without them. 

The position of one who stands among his fellows as 
a witness and a representative of the Gospel, an ex- 
pounder of that sacred Eevelation, a steward of the 
mysteries of God, must always be sufficiently solemn, 
and difficult ; but in times like those upon which our lot 
has fallen, its solemnity and its difficulty are very 
greatly enhanced. 

Ours is a transition period between the old and the 
new, when long established forms of belief are rudely 
shaken, when the spirit of Scepticism is challenging not 
merely every religious and moral truth but the very basis 
of social and political order. It is a time of sifting. 
Dogmas, creeds, opinions are freely challenged. Author- 
ity counts for little : reason for much. All is chaos. The 
old order is changing, the new has not yet emerged. 
Hence much confusion, uncertainty, alarm. Some are 
driven entirely away from the old moorings of faith. 

* This identity however consisted with momentous change 
See Essay No. VIII. in this volume. 



84 THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 

Others are slowly drifting toward the vortex of unbe- 
lief. Others again are caught as Paul's ship in a place 
when two seas meet and know not what to do. On 
the one hand we see many sad defections to the camp 
of unbelief; while others are found ready to throw 
themselves into the arms of extreme ecclesiasticism, 
seeking in the doctrine of church authority the safe- 
guard against unbelief. Such was the Oxford move- 
ment in its well-meant but futile attempt to erect a 
breakwater against the rising tide of skepticism. 
These, in short, are the " new dark ages " described by 
the great laureate, 

" When the bat comes out of his cave, and the owls are whoop- 
ing at noon, 

And Doubt is the Lord of this dunghill, and crows to the sun 
and the moon, 

Till the Sun and the Moon of our Science are both of them 
turned into blood, 

And Hope will have broken her heart, running after a shadow 
of good." 

Such a situation demands of those who would defend 
the Faith, however, something more than fidelity, 
loyalty, and courage. " An understanding heart " 
must be earnestly sought,— that wisdom " which is 
from above, " — that " right judgment w for which the 
Church teaches us to pray, as the special gift of the 
Holy Ghost, that the Christian apologist may un- 
dertake his task with a true comprehension of the 
situation with which he has to deal, and a just dis- 
crimination of the instruments he should use. 

We offer one or two suggestions upon this difficult 
practical question. 



THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 85 

Before all things the situation calls for the preach- 
ing of Christ as the only hope of a weary world, the 
only rest for a troubled, distracted age;— Christ, and not 
a religious philosophy; Christ, and not a system of theo- 
logy; Christ, and not a dogmatic system about Christ. 
Taught by the failures of scholastic theology, which 
has too often offered the world a nicely articulated 
skeleton of its own make instead of the living, loving 
Christ, the ministers of the Cross should make it their 
steadfast aim to present to their fellowmen the person 
of Christ in all its matchless beauty; in all its incom- 
parable attractiveness, assured that if the minds of 
men can but be turned away from the thorny contro- 
versies and disputes and debates about religion to the 
contemplation of Christ Himself, in His life and words 
and works, in his Cross and passion, they cannot 
choose but feel His power. If men ask for our creed, 
can we do better than to point them to Christ? He is 
the divine original, — the formal Creed is but the 
human copy. 

If men challenge us as defenders of the Faith to set 
the battle in array, should we not concentrate our de- 
fense upon the Person of Christ? That is the vital 
point— the key of the position— the citadel. If we 
make that good, the battle is won: if not, it is lost. 
When the late Sir Bartle Frere in the crisis of the 
Indian mutiny despatched the flower of his army to the 
assistance of Sir John Lawrence, leaving his own po- 
sition almost undefended, he justified his act by words 
which have become historic: — " When the head and the 
heart are threatened, the extremities must take care of 
themselves/' Find we here a lesson of the greatest im- 



86 THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 

portance in defending the faith. In this our day it 
is the very heart and vitals of Christianity that are 
threatened : — let our apologetic forces then be concen- 
trated upon them, and let " the extremities " take care 
of themselves. We must say to our doubting fellowmen 
who are striving to determine the claims of the Chris- 
tian religion:— For you the first and chiefest question is, 
Who was Jesus Christ? Whence came He? What was 
his work and its meaning? and what is your relation to 
Him? Fix then your whole attention upon this, and 
till it is settled, let all other religious problems and diffi- 
culties stand on one side. And rest assured that when 
you are able to bow at His feet and call Him your Re- 
deemer and your Lord, you are a Christian, whatever 
else you believe or disbelieve. 

We offer a second suggestion, which we cannot but 
think of great moment. It is this: That the Christian 
apologist should recognize the measure of truth which 
the rationalistic system contains, and hasten to reclaim 
it as the rightful territory of theology. Eationalism, 
in the form considered here, has in fact occupied 
much ground that had been neglected by the Christian 
Church, to its detriment and to that of the truth of 
God. In many of its salient positions, it may be 
regarded as an extreme protest on behalf of some for- 
gotten or neglected truth, or as a reaction from some 
perversion of truth by the representatives of theology. 
God has used the enemies of the Faith as He used the 
Philistines of old to chastise His people. We owe a 
debt of gratitude to the rationalist. He has shown us 
our errors in many things — has exposed our weak 
points, and rebuked our one-sided exaggerations. And 



THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 87 

as the strength of this false system lies in the truth of 
which it is a distorted or exaggerated expression, so 
will it be our wisdom to reconquer for Christianity 
the ground thus abandoned to its deadly foe. 

If rationalism has exalted reason to a position of au- 
thority dangerous to the existence of revealed religion, 
it must be remembered that theology has not suffi- 
ciently emphasized the reasonableness of Christianity, 
and has too frequently exhibited it as if it lived and 
moved and had its being in a region apart from reason, 
in oblivion of the unquestionable fact that " Keason and 
Revelation are two correlates," children of one Father, 
and indispensably necessary to each other. If again, 
Rationalism lays such emphasis on the revelation of God 
to man in nature, and in history, and in human life, 
as really to exalt it above the revelation in Christ, it is 
to be borne in mind that theology has for the most 
part not given sufficient importance to these lower and 
dimmer revelations of the Father. The age demands, 
nay, the truth demands, that Christianity should be 
correlated with reason and with nature and with hu- 
man life, with creation, with the progress of history, 
with the development of the race, with the final goal 
to which, under infinite and unerring guidance, the 
world is slowly and painfully struggling. Let it be 
confessed, the supernatural has been so defined and so 
exhibited as to leave upon man's mind the impression 
that it is the anti-natural, and the revolt from this mis- 
representataion has given us the rationalistic denial of 
the supernatural. It has been said of Bengal that he 
" led Protestantism from the individual religious view 
of life to the historical and cosmic one," but unhap- 



88 THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 

pily his lead has not been sufficiently followed. While 
Rationalism " lays almost exclusive emphasis on na- 
ture and reason/' our Christian teachers are still opeu 
to the charge of laying a similar exclusive emphasis on 
Scripture, whereas a scientific theology should seek to 
combine the higher and lower revelation. We delight 
to trace the gradual preparation for Christianity among 
heathen people in the pre-Christian age, but we neg- 
lect to seek the divine purpose in the progress of uni- 
versal history, and in the unfolding of the will and the 
plan of the Creator in the development of science, 
which, after all, is but the deciphering of the long- 
hidden meaning of the hieroglyphics graven on the 
pillars of the world. The God of science, the God of 
history, the God of humanity, is our God — the God and 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, " in whom are hid all 
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." It should 
be, then, the consecrated task of the theology of the 
future to reclaim from the sway of a rationalistic phil- 
osophy these "great provinces of truth, and to plant 
over them also the banner of the Cross, remembering 
the sure word of prophecy spoken by the great Apostle 
that it is the purpose of God " to gather together in 
one all things in Christ. Yes, Christ as the Logos is 
the ground of creation, and as the Incarnate Re- 
deemer, crucified for us, He is the source and the 
centre of the world's progress. Johannes von Miiller 
found in His Cross the key by which to unlock history. 
And Jean Paul Richter cries concerning Him : et The 
Mightiest among the holy and the Holiest among the 
mighty — He has lifted with his pierced hands empires 
off their hinges, has turned the stream of centuries out 
of its channel, and still rules the ages I " 



THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 89 

To the instances already adduced of reaction in a 
rationalistic direction from the exaggerations or defects 
of Christian theology may be added another, drawn 
from the doctrine of inspiration. " The Church of the 
future/' said the great prelate with whose words we 
opened this essay, " will not plunge into vain discus- 
sions as to the precise mode and limits of the inspira- 
tion of the writers of the sacred books. It will, I think, 
follow the wise caution of the thirty-nine articles/' Un- 
happily the Church of the past two centuries has 
plunged into these discussions. It has too often insis- 
ted on a theory of mechanical, verbal inspiration, in a 
pharisaic devotion to the letter, fatal to a true apprehen- 
sion of its spirit, and finding its disastrous reaction in a 
denial of supernatural inspiration. Now let it be ob- 
served that this was not the doctrine of the reformers 
either in England, or on the continent. It is not found in 
the great confessions of Protestantism. It arose in the 
age which followed the Reformation. " The Bible," says 
Auberlen, u was not taken as God had given it. A sys- 
tem was set above it, which was not in harmony with the 
real conditions on which it is given. They were blind 
to the imperfections which God had allowed to remain 
in His word. This extreme, which takes the Bible not 
as it is, but as men would fain have had it, I do not 
intend to defend; I charge it, indeed, with a part of the 
guilt of those who think themselves justified, as its 
opponents, in representing and condemning strict 
faith in the Bible, as scientific dishonesty or blind 
narrowness of mind.* These words are true — and Stier 



* " Divine Kevelation," p. 245. 



90 THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 

is right when he says, " We give up the claim of perfect 
freedom from error for the Bible, but only in such 
things as are really indifferent to salvation and the 
doctrines of the gospel." To quote again from Au- 
berlen, " We do not possess a canon that is absolutely 
free from mistake; nor, indeed, do we require it. What 
we require is a record of revelation absolutely true, 
and that we possess in the Scriptures." It is the 
word of God, but " in human forms and beneath a hu- 
man veil." We maintain its sufficiency, its authority, 
and in matters of faith and morals even its infallibility. 
More than this we do not need and we cannot sub- 
stantiate ; and if we claim more, we distinctly imperil 
its position as the supreme authority in the things of 
God. In this point, as in the others adverted to, orth- 
odoxy has to bear its share of reproach for the rise of 
rationalistic Christianity which is in part the result of 
a reaction from dogmatistic theology and rabbinical ex- 
egesis. 

Finally, the highest and holiest interests of truth 
demand that the Christian thinker should vindicate 
afresh his liberty to search the Scriptures for himself 
with the best light God gives him and to interpret them 
with freedom, unshackled by the traditions of the el- 
ders, and unterrified by the fear that in departing from 
human systems he is departing from the all-holy truth 
of God. 

In proportion as we insist on the immutability of 
the Gospel as a sacred deposit which no man or body 
of men may change, must we also carefully distinguish 
between theology and the faith, and between the per- 
manent essence and the changing form of religious be- 



THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 91 

liefs. The everlasting Gospel is all divine— the same 
from age to age : — but systems of theology are human- 
divine—they are part clay and part gold, mingling hu- 
man philosophy with Divine Kevelation, the imperfec- 
tions of human logic and human imagination with the 
perfections of divine truth. Hence they are mutable, 
and perishing. 

" Our little systems have their day, 
They have their day and cease to be: 

They are but broken lights of Thee 

And Thou, O Lord, art more than they." 

The recognition of this fact is of great importance. 
It lifts a burden from our faith, which otherwise 
would be staggered by the spectacle which the his- 
tory of Theology presents, — system succeeding sys- 
tem, system warring with system, in a vain struggle 
for the mastery. Once let it be recognized that the 
Bible contains.no formulated system, but presents re- 
ligious truth as Nature presents physical truth, and it 
will become plain why in the province of Theology, 
as in that of Natural Science, provisional systems are 
seen appearing and disappearing through the ages; and 
what is of no small importance, the ignorant scoff 
of the unbeliever against our " warring creeds " will be 
silenced, and the honest doubt of many a troubled soul 
will melt away when we demonstrate the parallel be- 
tween God's method of communicating His Truth in 
the Bible and in Nature. St. Paul has taught us that 
" knowledge vani'sheth away," and for the reason that 
" now we know in part." We see Truth not in its own 
absoluteness, but reflected "in a mirror," and the mir- 



92 THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 

ror is far from giving back a perfect image. Hence we 
know only " in part; " as it were "in a riddle/' and 
we must wait for eternity to see the Truth "face to 
face" in its perfect beauty and faultless proportion. 

It is a great matter of thankfulness that we can trace 
in the history of theological opinion not only change, 
but progress. Its image is not a stagnant pool, but a 
river such as Ezekiel saw flowing forth Irom the thres- 
hold of the Temple, widening and deepening in its on- 
ward progress. As Jesus increased in wisdom, so also 
the Church has grown wiser in the things of God as 
the ages have rolled on. A clearer vision of the truth 
has been gained by the long conflict of theologies. 
The Master has unfolded to one age what the preced- 
ing age perhaps could not bear. More and more light 
has shined forth out of His Holy Word, which has con- 
tinually led the advance of human knowledge. There 
has been a shining more and more, not yet indeed unto 
the perfect day, but in the direction of it. As we see that 

" Thro' the ages an increasing purpose runs," 
so also we discern an increasing light, — a clearer appre- 
hension of God's word and works, — a deeper insight into 
the proportions of truth, as the mists of early morning 
have gradually cleared away and the Sun of Kighteous- 
ness has slowly risen to shed His bright beams upon 
the world. 

Thus the science of divine things takes its place in 
the march of human progress. For it too the motto 
is "Forgetting the things that are behind, and reaching 
forth to those things which are before, I press toward 
the mark." The golden age of Christian theology is 
not to be sought in the 16th Century, nor in the 3rd 



THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 93 

Century, nor in the 1st; it is yet to come. It lies be- 
hind the hills. Ages yet unborn will behold the glory 
of God in the everlasting Gospel with a clearness and 
an effulgence in comparison with which our apprehen- 
sion is but as the dawn to the noon-day. 

Let us advert for a moment, in concluding, to the 
task which lies before Christian Theologians in this 
age of the world. We cannot be blind to the gravity of 
the crisis through which Christian belief is passing. 
We cannot choose but see that the religious opinions 
of mankind are in a state of flux, — that "the crystals 
of former doctrine " are dissolving, — that much of the 
intellect of our age has already revolted from Christian- 
ity, — and that many of the children of the Church have 
reluctantly abandoned the faith of their childhood, — 
unable, not unwilling, to cherish it longer. 

Nor can it be doubted, — such conservative thinkers 
as Archbishop Tait confess it — that theology must 
not only change front to meet the assaults of the 
enemies of the faith, but correct some of its positions 
and reconsider and readjust its doctrinal forms. 

In this work of the purification of Theology from 
the adulterations of human error, each earnest thinker, 
however lowly his place, may bear his part. Would 
that each might bear it wisely, patiently, courageously, 
in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves, 
—in the spirit of that great teacher of our modern 
Alexandrian School, who was wont to say to his pupils, 
" Seek the truth, corne whence it may, cost what it will" 

We cannot always see eye to eye with those who have 
gone before us, whose work we delight to honor, and 
whose piety and devotion we reverence profoundly, for 



94 THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 

we must before all things be loyal to the Truth as God 
gives us to see it. Even the great doctrines of the 
atonement, the inspiration of the Bible, and the future 
retribution, will have to be restated in the light of a 
truer exegesis ; but, such changes are no evidence of 
"the decay of Christianity," but of the development 
of " the plans of Christ in the education of the world." 

With laborious diligence, then, with a wise caution, 
with a deep sense of their own liability to error, and with 
unceasing prayer for the divine guidance, Christian 
theologians should address themselves to the task, 
which the Providence of God imposes upon them. 

They could ask no higher honor than to have part 
in doing for their age what Bengel did for his, when 
" he broke the fetters of an exegetical tradition that 
had come to be regarded as inviolable, vindicated the 
rights of exposition in relation to dogmatic theology, 
and pointed out to the Church, in the Scriptures, the 
Castalian spring out of which she should ever renew 
her youth." 

In old St. Michael's Church, Charleston, one may 
see a chancel window which for generations had been 
walled up, until the very knowledge of its existence 
had been lost. But when by accident it was discovered, 
the wall by which the masons of a previous age had 
closed it up was removed and the light of heaven once 
more allowed to shine in upon the chancel, according 
to the architect's design. Something like this has 
happened in the history of religious thought. Theolo- 
gians of past generations have closed up windows though 
which light once streamed in upon the Church ; and 
part of the duty which devolves upon the Christian 



THE GOSPEL AND THE PSEUDO-GOSPELS. 95 

scholars of this age is to pull down these walls and re- 
open those closed windows and restore to the Church a 
light which was hers in earlier ages. 

But the work which waits to be done is not only a 
work of restoration. Fresh investigation of Holy 
Scripture under the guidance of the Spirit of all wis- 
dom will open up new aspects of truth. Doubtless 
Jesus has yet many things to say unto His Church 
through His word which hitherto she could not bear. 
We may humbly trust that He will open her under- 
standing more and more fully to understand the Scrip- 
tures, — and then through His blessings upon their la- 
bors, her children may bring from that inexhaustible 
quarry new stones which the great Master Builder will 
accept at their hands and build into the walls of that 
majestic Cathedral of Truth which is slowly rising 
from age to age to the glory of the Triune God, 



IV. 

THE INCARNATION IN ITS RELA- 
TION TO MIRACLE. 



" With belief in the virgin birth is apt to go belief in 
the virgin life .... That belief in the virgin life must go 
there can be little doubt, if we are to carry out to its ut- 
most consequences a purely naturalistic theory of the 
universe. A sinless man is as much a miracle in the 
moral world as a virgin birth is a miracle in the physical 
world. If we are to hold a speculative view of the uni- 
verse which absolutely excludes miracle, then we must 
be content with a Christianity which consists in dxily ap- 
preciating a great but not perfect character. The bias 
of faith in the present time is to make itself entirely in- 
dependent of the miraculous. But the thing is impossi- 
ble" — Alex. Balmain Bruce. 

" / will frankly confess that up to this hour I have 
never been able to discover any stumbling-block to my in- 
tellect in the conception of a miracle." — Richard Rothe. 



IV. 

THE INCARNATION IN ITS RELATION TO MIRACLE. 

That form of religious belief which recognizes the 
truth of the Incarnation and accepts the Catholic doc- 
trine of the perfect deity of Christ, yet denies any mir- 
aculous element in Christianity, may be considered a 
strange phenomenon; but it is one with which those 
who have followed the course of neological thought in 
our time are not unfamiliar.* It distinctly emerged to 
view in the "Scotch Sermons" of 1880, which had 
so wide a circulation. Thus one of the writers in 
that volume affirmed that the great battle of the last 
century over the credibility or incredibility of miracle 
"was an affair of outposts altogether," and touched 
"no vital point of revelation." Now it is doubtless 
true that the miracles of the New Testament have not 
for later ages the same evidential value as for the first 
age of the Church; nor the same for this age as for the 
last; and, accordingly, our best writers on Apologetics 
now concentrate their defence rather upon the person of 
Christ than upon His miracles, holding that for us the 
superhuman character and work of Christ constitute 
the guarantee for His miracles, rather than His mira- 
cles the guarantee for His superhuman personality. 
But it will be observed that the writer just referred to 
does not stop here, but goes on to deny that " belief in 

* Cf. however, Schleiermacher's view, which presents points 
of coincidence with this. 

LcfC. 



100 THE INCARNA TION IN BEL A TION TO MIR A CLE. 

the revelation necessarily brings with it a belief in mir- 
acle," and maintains that to suppose that the suprem- 
acy of Christianity can be dangerously affected by the 
denial of miracle "is to misapprehend its power and 
essence." * 

It is the object of this essay to deal with the phase 
of belief just described, and to show, in opposition 
thereto, that belief in the Incarnation necessarily in- 
volves belief in miracle. 

I. If we examine the question from the historical 
point of view, we are at once arrested by the highly 
significant fact that from the earliest period of the his- 
tory of Christianity, belief in the Incarnation (hoapMMns) 
was indissolubly connected with belief in the miracu- 
lous conception. The records of the first ages of the 
Church contain no trace of any doubt upon this sub- 
ject among those who "worshipped Christ as God." 
If it was denied, it was by those who, like the Ebio- 
nites and other kindred sects, denied as well the Di- 
vinity of Christ, and indeed could scarcely, by any 
stretch of charity, be considered Christians. The early 
creeds, without any known exception, enshrined the 
same faith; for though there was a variation of phrase- 
ology — some having only "born by the Holy Ghost of 
the Virgin Mary " (qui natus est de Spirtu Sancto ex 
Maria Virgine,) or, " born of the Holy Ghost and the 
Virgin Mary " (de Spiritu Sancto et Maria Virgine), in- 
stead of the fuller phrase, " conceived by the Holy 
Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary " — yet no one will pre- 
tend that these verbal differences represented divergent 

* "Scotch Sermons,' * 1880, p. 81. New York; D. Apple- 
ton & Co. 



THE INCARNATION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 101 

views on the subject of the conception of Christ. 
Neither will it be alleged that the words of the creed 
imply no more than the energizing of the Holy Ghost 
in the natural processes of human reproduction, in 
which sense it would be true of every child that it is 
"conceived by the Holy Ghost " ; for however great a 
relief such forced interpretations may afford to some 
consciences, it must be clear, even to them, that such 
was not the sense in which the creeds were understood 
by those who framed them. They did not use words in 
their symbols of faith without any specific meaning, 
nor in any sense which would have turned the recital 
of their belief into solemn trifling. 

How far, however, was this faith of the Early Church 
in the miraculous conception justified by the New Test- 
ament Scriptures? 

It goes without saying that the opening chapters of 
St. Matthew's and St. Luke's gospels distinctly relate 
the conception of Jesus as a miraculous event. But we 
would invite the reader to observe that it is there taught 
not only directly and in terms, but indirectly, incident- 
ally, and by implication, a circumstance which the de- 
structive criticism finds very awkward to deal With. 
Thus in St. Matthew we have not only the statement 
that the Virgin was " found with child of the Holy 
Ghost/' but also Joseph's surprise at her condition, his 
intention to put her away, the angel's explanation, 
and Joseph's subsequent conduct. Even the genealogy, 
which has been much alleged as a difficulty, affords 
strong evidence against the spuriousness of the first 
chapter of Matthew's gospel. For, on the supposition 
that the belief in the miraculous conception was a later 



102 THE INCARNATION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 

growth incorporated into the Gospel, it is certain that 
a genealogy which traced the lineage of Christ from the 
side of Joseph and not of Mary would have been felt to 
be so great a difficulty that it would have been omitted, 
or, at least, would not have been placed in immediate 
juxtaposition with the narrative of the conception by 
the Holy Ghost. At the same time we must not omit 
to notice that this genealogy does not assert that Jo- 
seph was the father of Jesus, but only that he was 
"the husband of Mary, of whom (£? S, t\ e., of Mary) 
was born Jesus who is called Christ/' (chap. 1: 16). 

Strauss and his followers, with some who use his 
arguments, although they do not adopt all his conclu- 
sions, have made much of the alleged discrepancy be- 
tween Matthew and Luke in the narrative of the 
infancy; but the point which is of material importance 
in this discussion is the representation they give of the 
conception, and here they are in perfect harmony. 
They mutually explain each other. If, for example, 
St. Matthew gives the genealogy of Christ on the side 
of Joseph, St. Luke explains the reason by the inci- 
dental statement that Jesus was supposed to be the son 
of Joseph. The same statement of the third Evange- 
list explains why in the first we read that in His own 
city of Nazareth He was believed to be " the carpen- 
ter's son/' and in the fourth Gospel, that Philip, when 
he first made the acquaintance of Jesus, spoke of Him 
as "Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph/' And 
these instances of the popular belief respecting His 
parentage are so far from being inconsistent with the 
narratives in the earlier chapters of Matthew and Luke, 
that the latter evangelist has incorporated into his ac- 



THE INCARNATION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 103 

count, in the very part supposed to be spurious, the 
beautiful incident in the Temple when Mary said to 
her Son, "Thy father and I have sought thee sorrow- 
ing/' which is immediately supplemented, however, by 
the boy's answer, "Wist ye not that I must be about 
my Father's business?" Moreover, all the gospels 
alike show that there were the gravest reasons why the 
true history of His birth should not at first be made 
public. 

The silence of St. Mark and St. John on the subject 
is not strange, if we consider that they pass over the 
entire history of the infancy and childhood of Jesus, 
and if we disabuse our minds of the notion, which has 
been the parent of so many mistakes, that the gospels 
are histories or biographies of Christ. But, as Van 
Oosterzee has pointed out, St. John's description of 
the children of God, in his first chapter, contains "a 
choice and accumulation of expressions, which may 
well call forth surprise, if we are not to suppose that 
the miraculous beginning of our Lord's life, undoubt- 
edly made known to Him by Mary, was more or less 
directly before His mind." And we may add that the 
connection of verses 13 and 14 (chap. 1) confirms this 
view. The sons of God "were born not of the will of 
the flesh, nor of the will of man ; and the Word was 
made flesh " — how he does not say, but, the connection 
suggests "not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will 
of man, but of God." Indeed, as Westcott remarks 
here, " the fact of the miraculous conception, though 
not stated, is necessarily implied by the Evangelist. 
The coming of the Word into flesh is presented as a 
creative act in the same way as the coming of all 



104 THE INCARNATION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 

things into being was." These considerations place 
St. John side by side with St. Matthew and St. Luke, 
as a witness for the miraculous conception. 

If now we pass to the Epistles, we do not find ex- 
plicit statement of this doctrine : but we do find it 
everywhere implied; everywhere consistent with the 
teaching of the Apostles; while the contrary opinion 
of natural generation is clearly in conflict therewith. 
When St. Paul says that " in the fullness of time God 
sent forth His Son made (or born) of a woman," it is 
natural to ask why he should prefer this form of ex- 
pression to one which should declare Him begotten by 
a human father, if such were indeed the case. It was 
not the manner of the Jews to bring the mother into 
prominence. There would seem, therefore, good rea- 
son for Calvin's comment: " Discemere Christum a 
reliqius volunt liominibus: quia exsemine matris creatus 
sit, non vivi et mulieris coitu" Certainly, the humanity 
of Christ and His obligation as a man to keep the Law, 
could have been as easily expressed by describing Him 
as " the Son of man '* ; and hence it seems natural to 
see here a parallel to the first great prophecy that 
"the seed of the woman," not of the man, "should 
bruise the serpent's head " (the reason in both passages 
being the peculiar relation of woman to the Kedeemer.)* 

* The words of St. Paul (Rom. i. 3), "made of the seed of 
David according to the flesh," have been alleged by Pfleiderer 
and others as indicative that the Apostle did not hold to the 
supernatural conception, but, as Dr. Bruce has remarked in 
his Apologetics (p. 408) " the utmost that can be said is that 
we might naturally put that construction on them in absence 
of information to the contrary. The expression is quite rec- 
oncilable with the miraculous birth." 



THE INCARNATION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 105 

But waiving this passage, we adduce as a conclusive 
proof that Paul could not have believed that Jesus was 
the son of Joseph, his well-known doctrine of the first 
and second Adam. In his Epistle to the Eomans (chap. 
v.) he insists with emphasis on the necessary inheri- 
tance of sin and death by all who are the natural des- 
cendants of Adam j and again, to the Corinthians he 
writes : " The first man is of the earth, earthy ; the 
second man is the Lord from heaven/' " He who is 
to be the head of a new race which is to be at once di- 
vine and human— the realization, that is to say, of its 
primitive type — cannot be simply one of the links of 
the long chain of natural generations, all tainted with 
the evil which has, as it were, become incorporated in 
a fallen race. It is impossible that He should save hu- 
manity if He has to say with David, * I was conceived 
in sin/ We must make, as it were, a new beginning, 
and the second Adam cannot destroy the work of the 
first, except on condition that He be not of his descent. 
He must be born of a woman, and assume a truly hu- 
man nature ; but it is equally essential that the active 
cause of His earthly being be not a corrupt humanity, 
but the divine and creative principle/'* As the first 
Adam came not by natural generation but by creation, 
so was it to be expected the second Adam should come 
in a sense direct from the hand of God. "The Word 
was made flesh " {kyhero.) 

To these considerations we should add that there are 
strong internal reasons, in the matter and spirit of St. 
Luke's gospel, for believing the testimony of Irenaeus 



* E. de Pressense : Jesus Christ, etc., p. 191. 



106 THE INCAUNA TWN IN BEL A TION TO Mill A CLE. 

that "Luke, the companion of Paul, put into writing 
the gospel preached by the latter." This argument 
has been exhibited with great force by an able writer; 
who shows solid grounds for believing that the third 
gospel is in truth the gospel of Paul.* It yet further 
strengthens our position to recall the fact that the 
Ebionitish sects, who rejected the miraculous concep- 
tion, were the vehement opponents of the Pauline gos- 
pel. 

Here, then, is the state of the case. The miraculous 
conception is asserted by the early creeds with one 
voice. It is clearly and unequivocally taught by two 
of the four Gospels, one of which bears the strong im- 
press of the mind of St. Paul ; it is taught by necessary 
implication in the fourth Gospel ; it underlies the the- 
ology of the Apostles, especially that of Paul ; and, 
finally, it is entirely consistent with the New Testa- 
ment teaching as a whole ; while the contrary view of 
ordinary generation renders the harmony of the early 
creeds on this doctrine inexplicable, makes the Evan- 
gelists contradict each other and contradict themselves, 
and is out of harmony with the statements of the rest 
of the New Testament, f 

Such is the historical argument, briefly stated. We 
are not sanguine enough to suppose that it will carry 
conviction to the minds of our opponents; because in 
truth it is not with them an affair of history or of ex- 

* Godet, Studies on the New Testament. 

t Modern science points out many examples in the natural 
order of uni-sexual generation (virgin births), which at least 
may suggest that the virgin birth of Jesus is not a violent 
" rent " in the order of nature. 



THE INCARNATION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 107 

egesis, or even of criticism, but of philosophy. Men 
will be found on opposite sides of this question accord- 
ing as they have or have not accepted what the unbe- 
lievers call "the modern idea of the world. " In the 
case of those who have accepted it unreservedly, the 
fixed, the certain, the known is to be found in the do- 
main of science, not in the domain of religion. Their 
religion is a function of their philosophy. Their reli- 
gious convictions and beliefs wait upon their scientific 
conceptions. Science — the science of matter — is in 
truth enthroned in sovereign state. Eeligion is dis- 
crowned and dethroned. It exists only by sufferance. 

Now it is no doubt true that there is more than one 
sacred scripture and more than one divine revelation. 
God has written His name and revealed His nature in 
the constitution of the material universe and in the in- 
tellectual and moral nature of man, no less truly than 
in the pages of the Old and New Testaments — no less 
truly, but far less clearly. The revelation of the Bible 
(on all moral and spiritual questions, and on physical 
questions too, at their point of contact with the moral 
and spiritual) at once supplements and interprets the 
other two. It is so far their key. It answers to the 
Greek inscription on the Eosetta stone. By its aid we 
shall make out the two forms of hieroglyphics on the 
physical and moral faces of the great column of the 
Cosmos. 

We may go with one of the writers of the Scotch 
Sermons of 1880, when he says that " the progress of 
history is a revelation of God ; " but we part company 
with him when he claims for history the right "to. 
modify the New Testament revelation." (p. 71.) 



108 THE INCABNA TION IN EEL A TION TO MIR A CLE. 

The real point of divergence, therefore, let us again 
insist, is not found in the interpretation of the New 
Testament, but in the adoption or rejection of the phil- 
osophy which makes nature the supreme court of 
appeal. This is substantially admitted by the same 
Scotch sermonizer, when he says of those who deny 
miracle and yet would fain retain Christianity, that 
" they are so strongly impressed by the revelation of 
nature that any teaching which is at variance with her 
already known truths is, unless it comes with irresist- 
ible authority, at once decisively rejected." (p. 82.) 

Now the evidence of the Christian revelation, and 
hence of the Christian miracles, or of the one great mir- 
acle of Christianty, Jesus Christ, is not "irresistible." 
No moral evidence ever is, or can be, irresistible. It 
would lose its character as such if it were. Christianity 
cannot be demonstrated. If it could, it would cease to 
serve the ends of probation. That the " known truths " 
of nature cannot conflict with the real truths of religion 
will not be denied by any who believe in one God, the 
Maker of heaven and earth. But, unfortunately, the 
adherents of the system in question have shown a fatal 
tendency to confound scientific theories with " known 
truths" — as, for instance, the extreme theory of evolu- 
tion, pronounced by Virchow and Tyndall " utterly 
discredited." To such the interpretation of Scripture 
must needs be a secondary matter, and for them the 
conclusion is easy that " miracles belong to the poetry of 
religion" or, as others would say, "to the childhood of 
religion" 

So far as the last statement is concerned, we who 
hold to the supernatural are not careful to dispute it, 



THE INCARNATION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 109 

while we remember the words of our Master, " Except 
ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall 
not enter into the kingdom of heaven." 

Nor does the charge of a lack of culture — which is 
the bete noir of the naturalistic school — frighten us. 
We are more concerned to be found with the " babes 
and sucklings " to whom the Father has revealed Him- 
self, than with the " wise and learned " from whom He 
is " hid." But even otherwise, we should not be abashed 
when we observe that on the side of the supernatural 
stands the great body of the aristocracy of the human 
intellect in the past, and no inconsiderable part of it, to 
say the least, even in our own day. * 

II. Turn we then to the examination of the question, 

* The importance of the truth contended for above is well 
expressed by Dr. A. B. Bruce in the following passage : " It has 
to be remembered that faith is ever in a state of unstable 
equilibrium while the supernatural is dealt with eclectically; 
admitted in the moral and spiritual sphere, denied in the phys- 
ical. With belief in the virgin birth is apt to go belief in the 
virgin life, as not less than the other a part of the veil that 
must be taken away that the true Jesus may be seen as He 
was— a morally defective man, better than most, but not per- 
fectly good. 

" That belief in the virgin life must go there can be little 
doubt, if we are to carry out to its utmost consequences a 
purely naturalistic theory of the universe. A sinless man is 
as much a miracle in the moral world as a virgin birth is a 
miracle in the physical world. If we are to hold a speculative 
view of the universe which absolutely excludes miracle, then 
we must be content with a Christianity which consists in duly 
appreciating a great but not perfect character, or cease to pro- 
fess Christianity at all. . . The bias of faith in the present^ime 
is to make itself entirely independent of the miraculous. But 
the thing is impossible."— Apologetics, pp. 410, 411. 



110 THE INCARNATION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 

not now from the historical, but from the philosophical 
point of view. 

Waiving all consideration of the miraeulous concep- 
tion, let us ask what does the belief in the Incarnation, 
aside from the mode of its realization, carry with it ? 
If we accept the fact that Jesus Christ was the eternal 
Son of God, so that in Him dwelt the fulness of the 
Godhead bodily — must we also believe in miracle ? We 
answer, Yes, the Incarnation involves of necessity be- 
lief in miracle. For the coming down from heaven of 
the divine Logos, and His union with humanity in the 
person of Jesus, His being "made flesh, ,, or " made 
man," is surely an event which transcends the natural 
order, in whatever way we conceive this union to have 
been affected. It is not the mode of the phenomenon 
only which establishes its miraculous character, but the 
phenomenon itself. 

To be united with the man Jesus in a way generically 
the same as God is, or may be, united with other men, 
does not realize the idea of the Incarnation. For that 
requires, as its first and supreme condition, the union of 
the two natures. To quote the language of the Articles 
of the Church of England : " The Son of God was 
made very man ; " and " took man's nature in the 
womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance ; so that 
two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the God- 
head and manhood, were joined together in one person, 
never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very Cod 
and very man." 

Now^ such a union as is here described is entirely out- 
side of the sphere of natural phenomena. Natural 
caution cannot account for it. If it ever occurred, it is 



THE INC ARK A TION IN BEL A TION TO MIR A CLE. 1 1 1 

an event not only unique and unparalleled, but entirely 
beyond the possibilities of those natural forces which 
energize in nature and man. By its very statement it 
postulates the interposition of the divine upon the plane 
of the human, in a manner fundamentally miraculous. 
Unless we are prepared to assert that the infinite God can 
be held in solution, so to speak, in the forces of nature, 
so that those forces and potences shall, in the process 
of evolution, at length evolve the Maker of the uni- 
verse, then we must confess the Incarnation a super- 
natural event. 

We have said that the Incarnation transcends the 
natural order. Let us not be understood to mean that 
it has no place in the order of the universe. The Pau- 
line conception, the Petrine conception, nay, the New 
Testament conception, justifies no such position. On 
the contrary, it is there represented as an integral part 
of the divine order from the beginning. It was not an 
afterthought. It was not a " scheme" devised to meet an 
unanticipated emergency. It was in no proper sense 
an interruption of the order of the cosmos, if we in- 
clude in the cosmos, as unquestionably we should, the 
moral and the spiritual order. No; it was "foreor- 
dained before the foundation of the world," an essential 
part of the order of the universe ; no more an interrup- 
tion to the divine plan than the ripening of the grape 
is an interruption of the order of its being. In truth, 
it was the crown of the divine plan of the cosmos. 
Nor is this all. We can see its harmony with the sci- 
entific order. If science reveals, in astronomy, in ge- 
ology, in natural history, in sociology, the same great 
law of progress on an ascending scale; from inorganic 



112 THE INCABNA TION IN BEL A TION TO MIR A CLE. 

to organic matter ; from dead to living matter ; from 
the lower forms of life to the higher ; from the simple 
to the complex ; from the imperfect to the more per- 
fect — does the Incarnation contradict that law in as- 
serting that there was at last a progress from the more 
or less perfect to the absolutely perfect? If nature, 
through all geologic time, struggled slowly upward till 
she reached her final term in man, does the Incarnation 
stand in conflict with the principle involved in that 
progress, in asserting that at last, in the fulness of the 
time, there appeared on earth the divine Man. There 
is indeed a wide hiatus between the first man, who is of 
the earth, earthy, and the second man, who is the Lord 
from Heaven ; but this very hiatus finds its analogy in 
that between inorganic and organic matter — between 
dead and living matter — between the mere animal and 
man, ts the paragon of animals." 

The incarnation in truth completes the pyramid of 
which inorganic dead matter is the base and the human 
nature of Christ the apex. We might trace this har- 
mony on other lines, and exhibit the Incarnation as the 
last term of a series of revelations, of which the Crea- 
tion is the first — claiming that as man is the highest of 
God's self -revelations among created beings, so it is 
most reasonable that the highest and most glorious of 
all self-revelations of the Deity should be in the per- 
fect Man, the God-Man, Christ Jesus. 

Such a statement of the Incarnation will be chal- 
lenged from two quarters. 

One class of objectors will attack the analogy, and 
insist that it breaks down, because on the supposition 
it involves a miraculous intervention, which is contrary 



THE INCARNATION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 113 

to the order of the universe. We answer that the pres- 
ent state of science does not justify the assertion that 
no principle of causation has been introduced into the 
universe from without, or that the chain of sequences 
has never been touched by the hand of God. Mr. Tyn- 
dall admits a mighty mystery which looms up beyond 
the utmost confines of science, and affirms that no step 
has been made toward its solution: "Behind and 
above and around us the real mystery lies unsolved." 
"There is," he says, "no proof that life can be devel- 
oped, save from demonstrable antecedent life." With 
Virchow he holds that the theory of evolution in its 
complete form involves the assumption that, at some 
period or other of the earth's history, there occurred 
what would now be called spontaneous generation. " I 
agree with him that the proofs of it are still wanting, 
that the failures have been lamentable, and that the 
doctrine is utterly discredited." 

But the introduction of life into this planet, which 
is affirmed by some scientists, and cannot be denied by 
any in the present state of science, was truly a miracle. 
Moreover, a large and influential school of scientific 
men, who accept the principle of evolution in a modi- 
fied form, hold that the entrance of man upon the 
stage of nature must be considered an intervention of 
direct creative power. But every creation is by the 
definition a miracle. 

Another class of objectors will attack our presenta- 
tion of the Incarnation on the ground that by giving 
it a place in the order of the cosmos, and asserting its 
harmony with the law of progress, or of evolution, 
which pervades nature, we are cutting the ground from 



114 THE INCABNA TION IN BEL A TION TO Mill A CLE. 

under our feet and eliminating the miraculous from 
that doctrine. By no means. For we distinguish the 
order of nature from the order of the universe, as the 
part from the whole; and in tracing the analogies in 
nature to the principle of the Incarnation, we recognize 
the direct intervention of the divine upon the sphere of 
the natural and the human. 

We may smile at Mr. Mill's conceit of a possible 
world in which two and two do not make four, because 
we can sound that numerical relation to the bottom. 
But to say that there may not be a higher Order than 
we have ever compassed by our science, and a deeper 
Philosophy than we have ever fathomed with the plum- 
met of our reason, is an assertion which science and 
reason both forbid us to make. Are we then in a posi- 
tion to affirm that into that grander Order miracles may 
not fit as harmoniously as the once-supposed erratic 
and eccentric movements of the comets fit into the 
framework and mechanism of the heavens? In our 
present imperfect knowledge, and with our finite and 
fallible faculties, it is really as unreasonable to deny 
the possibility of miracles as it was for that eastern 
monarch whose experience lay only in the tropical zone 
to deny the possibility of the phenomenon of ice. And 
yet Hume's argument, which is the stock in trade of 
the naturalistic school, would have perfectly justified 
him. 

It is in vain, therefore, for Strauss and his motley fol- 
lowing to assert complacently, " that the totality of 
things forms a vast circle which suffers no intrusion 
from without." For, as Bushnell says, " what if it 
should happen that above this totality of things there 



THE INCARNATION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 115 

is a grand totality superior to things? Wherein is it 
more incredible that this higher totality should exert a 
subordinating c external influence ' on the whole of 
things, than that one kingdom in nature trenches upon 
another? Why may not men, angels, God, subordinate 
and act upon the whole of what is properly called na- 
ture? And what are all the organic powers in nature 
doing but giving us a type of the truth, to make it fa- 
miliar? And then how little avails the really low ap- 
peal from such a testimony to the current unbeliefs and 
crudities of a superficial, coarse-minded, unthinking 
world?" It^is highly reasonable to believe that " the 
physical order called nature is perhaps only a single 
and very subordinate term of that universal divine sys- 
tem, a mere pebble chafing in the ocean-bed of its 
eternity." 

But to return. We have maintained that belief in 
the Incarnation, with or without the miraculous con- 
ception, necessarily involves belief in miracle, because 
the union of the divine Logos with the man Jesus of 
Nazareth, if we admit the reality of that union and do 
not take refuge in the docetic conception, is an event 
which entirely transcends the natural order, and which 
cannot conceivably be the result of the natural forces 
which energize in man. 

The same conclusion must be reached when we con- 
sider the perfection of the character of the incarnate 
Christ. The sinlessness of Jesus is an essential ele- 
ment in the conception of the Incarnation; and a sin- 
less man is as great a miracle as can be conceived. 
Such a character cannot be the result of the laws of 
nature, cannot be produced by the ordinary forces 



116 THE INCARNATION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 

which energize in man; least of all could emerge from 
such an intellectual and moral environment as that of 
Judgea or Galilee. For it is as certain that there is a 
" reign of law " in the intellectual and moral world as 
in the material: and since it cannot be denied that Je- 
sus Christ is a phenomenon for which the known laws 
of that world cannot adequately account, it follows 
that His person and character are as truly miraculous 
as the raising of Lazarus from the dead. 

The disciples of the extreme theory of evolution (and 
it is only the extreme theory which challenges miracle) 
should be the first to feel the force of this argument. 
For the very alpha and omega of their philosophy is 
that " evolution is effected by a number of small and 
inconsiderable variations ; " from which it follows by 
inexorable logic " that a man cannot emerge suddenly 
as a moral and intellectual giant above those surround- 
ings in the midst of which he has been born and has 
drawn his entire moral and intellectual nourishment; * 
and therefore the conclusion is inevitable — the perfect 
Man, the divine Man, the God-Man, could not have 
been produced by natural evolution in any age or in 
any land, much less in that age and in that land in 
which Jesus of Nazareth appeared. * 

Here, then, are the two rocks on which the anti- 
miraculous conception of the Incarnation must go to 
pieces — the perfect Deity and the perfect sinlessness of 
Christ. 

Both these are essential elements of the Incarnation, 
and both involve, by necessary consequence, belief in 
miracle. 



* See Row's Bampton Lectures, p. 135. 



THE INCARNATION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 117 

Humanitarianism follows in the wake of any concep- 
tion of the Incarnation which rejects miracle, for we 
are shut up to one of two alternatives; either the sin- 
lessness of Jesus will shatter the anti-miraculous con- 
ception of His person; or else, as is only too often the 
case, itself be shattered by it; and then the glory of 
His divine person is gone — He is the God incarnate no 
more. 

These consequences are not always foreseen; nor do 
they always follow rapidly upon the adoption of the 
opinions in question; but they are potentially involved 
in those opinions from the very first, and they who 
adopt them have entered upon a slippery path which 
surely tends to the rejection of the Christian revelation. 
They have given themselves over to that false and mis- 
leading spirit, the Zeit-geist, and they must perforce 
follow where it shall lead. The example of David 
Frederick Strauss is very instructive. In 1835 he 
wrote of Jesus Christ in a strain of lofty and enthusias- 
tic admiration: "Where," he exclaims, "shall we find 
in such beauty as we find it in Jesus that mirroring pur- 
ity of soul which the fury of the storm may agitate but 
cannot cloud? Where has there been so grand an idea, 
so restless an activity, so exalted a sacrifice for it, as in 
Jesus? Who has been the founder of a work which has 
endowed with as rich treasures, in as high a degree, the 
masses of men and nations through the long ages, as 
the work which bears the name of Christ? * * * As lit- 
tle as mankind can be without religion, so little can 
they be without Christ." This is what Strauss thought 
of Jesus in 1835. But what did he think of Him after 
a life passed under the influence of his anti-miraculous 



118 THE INCARNATION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 

philosophy? Ah! there is no longer any glory on the 
brow of Jesus now. The pages of Lessing and Goethe 
are as replete with " truths of salvation " as the dis- 
courses of Christ. He writes of Jesus rudely, even 
coarsely. He scruples not to stigmatize Him as "a 
visionary, a laggard in the development of mind/' "a 
fantastic fanatic/'* In short, the old man has reversed 
his saying just quoted, and says in effect now, " Man- 
kind has as little need of Christ as it has of Religion" 
Yes, he has reached the abyss to which for forty years 
he has been surely drifting — materialistic atheism. 

In vain then will the disciples of naturalism assever- 
ate (however sincerely) that in rejecting miracles they 
are only separating the false from the true, and that 
they still hold fast the essential fibre of Christianity. 
We tell them they are the victims of a fatal delusion : 
the miraculous is inextricably bound up with New 
Testament Christianity; and easier is it for Shylock to 
take his pound of flesh without blood than to separate 
the miraculous from Christianity without letting out its 
life-blood. "If Christ be not raised/' said the great 
apostle to the Gentiles, " then is your faith vain. Ye 
are yet in your sins/' "Yea, and we are found false 
witnesses of God/' Equally true is it that if God did 
not directly interpose upon the sphere of the human 
in the Incarnation, then is our faith vain, and the 
apostles are found false witnesses of God, because they 
have testified that God was manifest in the flesh, which 
is false, if indeed Jesus Christ was the product of the 
natural laws of the material and moral world. The 



* The Old Faith and the New. 



TEE INCARNATION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 119 

fibres of miracle interpenetrate the discourses, the life, 
the person of Christ: root them up and you root up the 
superhuman character of Jesus with them. 

The old rationalism tried it, and we know how fan- 
tastic and grotesque were the results in Eck and Bahrdt 
and Paulus. Schenckel, and Baur, and Kenan, and 
Strauss, all from different points of view, made the 
same attempt. We need not remind the reader of the 
result. We may, however, adduce here the language 
which Strauss employed in his preface to the first edi- 
tion of the Life of Jesus: "The essence of the Chris- 
tian religion is perfectly independent of my criticism. 
The supernatural birth of Christ, His miracles, His 
resurrection and ascension, remain eternal truths, what- 
ever doiibts may he cast on their reality as historical facts. 
* * * * The dogmatic significance of the life of Jesus 
remains inviolate * * * * No injury is threatened to the 
Christian faith." (p. xi.) And he concludes his third 
volume thus, "The critic is intrinsically a believer. 
In proportion as he is distinguished from the naturalis- 
tic theologian and the free-thinker — in proportion as 
his criticism is conducted in the spirit of the nine- 
teenth century — he is filled with veneration for every 
religion, and especially for the sublimest of all religions 
— the Christian — which he perceives to be identical 
with the deepest philosophical truth." (Vol. III. p. 397.) 

With such examples before our eyes we must be ex- 
cused for declining to accept the assurances of the dis- 
ciples of naturalism that, in eliminating the miraculous 
from the' conception of the Incarnation, they " preserve 
inviolate the dogmatic significance of the life of Jesus/' 
and "threaten no injury "to the Christian faith, but 



120 THE INCARNA TION IN RELA TION TO MIR A CLE. 

are only vindicating for it a firm place in the order of 
the cosmos by demonstrating its identity "with the 
deepest philosophical truth." 

It is philosophy itself which teaches us that when we 
reject miracle, we should also, to be consistent, reject 
not only the entire Christian revelation, but theism as 
well. For the same line of reasoning which banishes 
miracle from the cosmos, must also drive out that 
primeval miracle — the Creation; and with it human 
freedom. Then the notion of sin is relegated to the 
category of effete superstitions; all occasion for a reve- 
lation and an Incarnation is gone; the great truth 
which supports the entire structure of Theism — a per- 
sonal God — vanishes like a dream ; and above the gulf 
of Pantheism we hear the shriek of a fatherless world. 



V. 

THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE 
ATONEMENT. 



" It is as if there were a Cross unseen, standing on its 
undiscovered hill, far back in the ages, out of which was 
sounding always just the same deep voice of suffering 
love and patience that was heard by mortal ears from the 
sacred hill of Calvary .... This too, exactly, is the Cross 
that our Christ crucified reveals and sets before us. Let 
us come, then, not to the wood alone, not to the nails, not 
to the vinegar and the gall, not to the writhing body of 
Jesus, but to the very feeling of our God, and there take 

shelter I now assert a real propitiation before GodP 

—Horace Bushnell. 

" Christ put away sin, becoming the propitiation for 
the sins of the whole worlds — McLeod Campbell. 

" God can be a forgiving God, because Christ suffered 
and died and rose again.'' 1 — Andover Beview, July, 1885. 



V. 

the christian doctrine of the atonement.* 

Mr. Chairman: — 

As I have scanned the horizon of discussion on this 
mighty theme, so dark and difficult to the understand- 
ing, but so near and so simple to the heart, I have 
seemed to discern faintly, yet clearly, the approach of 
day; of a day, when, in the clear light of the Sun of 
Eighteousness, Christian teachers shall see " eye to 
eye" concerning the doctrine of the Atonement. Yes 
— notwithstanding the divergences on this platform to- 
night — I discern the promise of a better day coming, 
and perhaps not very far off, when those who are at 
one as to the doctrines of a personal God and the Holy 
Trinity will be substantially at one also as to the At- 
onement. (I limit my hope to those who accept these 
two first truths of the Christian religion, because Pan- 
theism, obviously, has no room for an atonement, 
while Unitarianism and Arianism, differing from the 
Catholic faith an Christology, can never be at one with 
it on Soteriology.) Sir, this great age-battle for truth 
has not been in vain. Each army has had its victories, 
but the fruits of victory in each case have inured to the 
benefit of the vanquished as well as of the victors, and 



*An Address delivered at the Tenth Church Congress, held 
in New Haven, Conn., Oct. 20th, 1885. 



124 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE A TONEMENT. 

to-day, all along the line, the opposing forces are fra- 
ternizing. We who stand for the objective view — owe 
a debt of gratitude to you who have maintained the 
opposite view. You have sifted out a great deal of 
chaff from our conceptions on this subject. You have 
cleansed our temple for us. With your whip of small 
cords you have driven out those materialistic and com- 
mercial ideas which had intruded themselves into the 
sacred precincts of this doctrine. Who is not thankful 
to see the scales and balances, and the arithmetical 
tables, and the ledgers with debit and credit accounts 
disappear from the sanctuary of the doctrine of the 
atonement ? They have disappeared. But, my friends, 
the Altar of Sacrifice has not disappeared — the blood 
sprinkled mercy-seat has not disappeared — the great 
High Priest with His censer of sweet incense has not 
disappeared ; nor will they ever disappear ! 

And now, how stands the other side? Have the 
champions of the moral theory learned nothing from 
this long warfare of the ages ? I think I may fairly 
say, they too have learned much. For if Abelard's 
position in making the love and not the justice of God 
the basis of the Atonement, has been justified in the 
sequel, the same cannot be said of his doctrine, that 
"nothing is needed but penitence in order to there- 
mission of sin; " and that "the object of the incarna- 
tion and death of Christ is to produce sorrow in the 
human soul." 

Who is a mightier champion of the moral view of 
the Atonement than Bushnell? Yet he frankly con- 
fesses the failure of purely moral theories, and declares 
that "before (the sacrifice of Christ,) [God] could not 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE A TONEMENT. 125 

embrace us in His love/' and that then " His love was 
the love of compassion, noiv it is the love of com- 
pliancy and permitted friendship." I know no more 
impressive illustration of the deep hold the objective 
view of Atonement has on reverent and earnest souls, 
than that great man's closing chapter, in which he 
urges the retention of the altar forms and the preach- 
ing of the " old rugged Gospel." Yes, it is true. Af- 
ter all the titanic efforts of his great intellect to 
overthrow the conception of expiation and to establish 
the moral view, he lifts up his mighty voice and cries • 
" Christ is good, beautiful, wonderful; His disinter- 
ested love is a picture by itself; His forgiving patience 
melts into my feeling ; His passion rends open my 
heart, but what is He for, and how shall He be made 
unto me the salvation I want? One word — He is my 
Sacrifice, opens all to me, and beholding Him, with all 
my sin upon Him, I count Him my Offering, I come 
unto God by Him and enter into the holiest by His 
blood." (Vicarious Sacrifice, I, 535.) And again, 
"Oppressed with guilt, we should turn ourselves joy- 
fully to Christ as the propitiation of our sins. * * * 
We should cry in our prayers, Lamb of God, that 
takest away the sins of the world, take away our sins ; 
or thinking of that sacred blood, whose drops fell as 
touches of life on the world's grand altar, Calvary, we 
should cry — Wash us, O Christ, in the blood of Thy 
cross and make us clean." (Id., p. 537.) 

A man thus profoundly influenced by the objective 
aspect of the Cross, could not long cling in theory to 
what he had really in attitude of soul renounced. Ac- 
cordingly, eight years later, Bushnell retracted his 



126 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT. 

position as regards propitiation, and wrote these deci- 
sive words : " Propitiation is the necessary precondition 
of forgiveness:' (II., 49). "I now asserc a real propitia- 
tion before God." (II., p. 14). (Yet I am bound m can- 
dor to add that he still claims to be an exponent of the 

moral view.) 

I might adduce similar utterances from McLeod 
Campbell: "Christ put away sin, becoming thepropia- 
tion for the sins of the whole world." "Justice and 
holiness presented obstacles to our salvation which 
rendered atonement necessary. The love of God as 
Moral Kuler demanded an atonement that our salva- 
tion might be consistent with the well-being of the 
moral universe." (On the atonement, pp. 20, 25.) 

To these voices let me add the latest utterance of 
the Andover Oracle. (And where, if not at Andover, 
shall we find " old faiths " placed in the newest light?) 
"God can be a forgiving God because Christ suffered 
and died and rose again." "God becomes propitious 
because Christ, laying down His life, makes the race to 
its latest individual capable of repenting, obeying, 
trusting; and He does this in such a way that God's 
abhorrence in sin is realized, the majesty of the law 
honored, the sinner and the universe convinced of the 
righteousness of the Divine judgments." "The large 
truth of Atonement is that except for Christ God 
could only punish sinners by withdrawing Himself from 
them." — Andover Beview, July, 1885. In the light of 
these representative utterances, I think I am justified 
in saying that the objective view of the Atonement is 
asserting itself very powerfully in rather unexpected 
quarters. 



CHRISTIAN DOCTBINE OF THE ATONEMENT. 127 

On the whole, then, the same Andover authority 
photographs the situation correctly when he says : 
" The present movement of thought seeks to find the 
union of the objective and subjective elements;" and it is 
precisely in this movement that I see grounds for the 
hope expressed at the outset of my remarks. 

I, for my part, believe that " the clock has finally 
struck, and the day has fully come for some new and 
better thinking on this subject/' that a noble task of 
reconstruction lies before this age in the statement of 
the doctrine of the Atonement, and that the prime 
condition of success in such a work is the recognition 
of both the objective and the subjective elements, both 
the Divine and the human side of the great reconcilia- 
tion. 

How shall we approach this task of reconstruction? 
Sir Henry Holland, referring to the doctrine of the 
correlation of forces, says, " It is the method by 
which nearest approach is made to the solution of the 
deepest mysteries of the universe." 

Mr. Chairman, theological science has suffered, and 
suffers to-day, from the failure to observe its relations 
to other sciences, and also from a failure to observe 
the mutual relations of spiritual truths. What theol- 
ogy is still waiting for, especially in the discussion of 
the Atonement, is a doctrine of correlation of spiritual 
forces. In that we shall find "the method " by which 
"nearest approach " will be made to the solution of 
this profound mystery. 

Let me illustrate my meaning by giving several ex- 
amples of truths which should be brought under the 
law of correlation. 



128 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT, 

1. The functions of the Father, and of the Son, and 
of the Holy Ghost in the Atonement should be exhib- 
ited in their connection and unity. 

We should bring out clearly the fact that the whole 
Godhead unites in the Atonement, that it is to be 
viewed as one great act of self-sacrifice wherein each 
person of the blessed Trinity bears His part — the 
Father giving the Son — the Son giving Himself — the 
Spirit consummating the sacrifice. This done, several 
important results will follow: — the revolting conception 
of an angry God soothed and pacified by the merciful 
Son, will have vanished; the " Pagan color " will have 
been completely removed from the idea of propitiation, 
which, purified and transfigured, will then take its 
rightful place in the conception of the Atonement; 
and the schism in the Godhead which the tritheistic 
conception had introduced will be healed, while the 
objections of Unitarians, like James Martineau, will 
completely collapse. 

2. Apply this doctrine of correlation to the attributes 
of God. Let it be shown that wisdom and holiness and 
justice and mercy are all mutually connected and in- 
dissolubly united, as stones in an arch, as colors in a 
ray of light — and two erroneous conceptions will be 
shut out of our view of the Atonement; we shall 
neither imagine what the venerable Archdeacon* has 
just described as a " civil war" between justice and 
mercy, ending happily for mankind in the triumph of 
mercy, nor shall we make for ourselves a God on whom 
justice has no claims, and from whose nature the 
"wrath-principle" is excluded. 

* Yen. F. W. Farrar, D.D., F. R. S. 



CHBISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT. 129 

3. Apply the doctrine of correlation again to the 
several phases of Christ's work. Do not lay exclusive 
stress on the Death of Christ as the reconciling and 
atoning work. Do not lay exclusive stress on the In- 
carnation. But show that these two transcendent 
events are co-ordinates like the foci of the eclipse. 
Given the foci, the eclipse can easily be described, 
given the Incarnation and the Death of Christ, the 
Atonement becomes easy to the heart. But more than 
this, link together in one unbroken chain all the 
events of redemption, and pray with the Catholic 
Church, " By the mystery of Thy holy Incarnation; by 
Thy Holy Nativity and Circumcision; by Thy Baptism, 
Fasting, and Temptation, Good Lord, deliver us;" 
but do not stop there. Go on to add, " By Thine 
Agony, and Bloody Sweat; by Thy Cross and Passion; 
by Thy precious Death and Burial; by Thy glorious 
Eesurrection and Ascension; and by the coming of the 
Holy Ghost, Good Lord, deliver us." Observe, how- 
ever, that such a correlation as this will still leave 
the death of Christ where Scripture has placed 
it — in the forefront of His work; not as an accident, 
nor as a mere incidental fact, nor as a " single incident 
in the great chain of events" (Littledale); but as the 
consummation and crown of His redeeming work, as 
the object and end to which all the rest had ultimate 
reference. It has been said that the "Atonement is to 
be found chiefly in the life of Christ" Mr. Chairman, 
I do not find that the Scriptures teach this, and I am 
resolved with Horace Bushnell, "either to have no 
Gospel at all, or to accept that which is given me." I 
do not find that the early Church or the early fathers 



130 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT. 

took Dr. Littledale's view of this point. For Hagen- 
bach tells us "that in the first period of history, 
though the Incarnation was recognized as having a 
redeeming efficacy, yet from the very beginning, on 
the basis of Apostolic Christianity, the redeeming effi- 
cacy was put chiefly in the sufferings and death of 
Christ" I do not find that the experience of the hu- 
man heart justifies me in placing the atoning efficacy 
chiefly in the life of Christ, for the sinner in his mo- 
ment of deepest awakening, and the saint in his hour 
of deepest need, have alike found their peace and their 
consolation in the precious death and passion, rather 
than in the life of the Lord Jesus. And in the 
solemn hour of death, that which has lighted the dark 
valley and shadow has been the Cross, not the manger. 
A Butler and a Washburn and a Stanley have so testi- 
fied, not less than the ignorant and unlearned. 

Twenty years' labor in the ministry with anxious 
souls and with dying men, justifies me in saying that 
experience as well as Scripture is in accord with the 
Eucharistic ascription: " All glory be to Thee, Al- 
mighty God, for that Thou didst give Thine only-be- 
gotten Son to suffer death upon the Cross for our 
redemption, Who made there, by His one oblation of 
Himself, once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient 
sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the 
whole world." 

4. Apply the same doctrine of correlation to the illus- 
trations and other representations of the Atonement 
given in Holy Scripture. We should exhibit these, if 
possible, in one view, or at least we should show that 
while each has its value and importance, no one is to be 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF ATONENENT. 131 

taken as exhaustive of its meaning, or as furnishing a 
rigorously logical conception of the subject. We shall 
then avoid the folly of building a system on a phrase — 
a pyramid on a pin-point — as the early Fathers after 
Irenaeus did in laying exclusive emphasis on the state- 
ment that Christ gave His life a ransom, as Anselm did 
in laying exclusive emphasis on the idea of sin as a debt, 
as the Keformers did in laying exclusive emphasis on 
the idea of vicarious substitution. There is Scriptural 
authority for asserting that Christ is our Kansom, 
our Substitute, our Propitiation. But because He is 
all of these, therefore He is no one of them. Each of 
these great ideas is tangent to the true philosophy of 
the Atonement at some point; and no theory of this 
great transaction can be correct which has not points of 
tangency with them; but to take any one of them and 
make that the basis and measure of the Atonement is 
like confounding one of the sides of a triangle with the 
circle described within that triangle, and tangent to 
each of its sides. On the same principle we must not 
press the teaching of one parable, or one representation 
of our Lord, as adequate to embrace the whole subject. 
One must supplement or correct the other, like the 
several views of one object taken by the photographer. 
He who spake the parable of the Prodigal Son, spake 
also that of the Lost Sheep and the Good Shepherd, 
and if the former exhibits only repentance, the latter 
shows thebasis on which repentance becomes available; 
viz., the self-sacrifice of the Shepherd of our souls. 
He who said " Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive/' 
etc., also said "This is my blood which is shed for the 
remission of sins." If the one utterance seems to im- 



132 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE A TONEMENT. 

ply that no Atonement is necessary, the other dispels 
that idea and shows us that forgiveness between man 
and man (equals) cannot proceed on the same basis as 
forgiveness between man and God (creature and Crea- 
tor). 

5. Apply the doctrine of Correlation to the witness 
of Scripture and of Reason and of Conscience and of 
Experience ; and so escape the one-sided systems of the 
literalist, the rationalist, the moralist, and the mystic. 

Sir, I do not pretend to have reached any adequate 
and satisfactory theory of the Atonement, but I do 
claim that one may trace clear lines of light proceed- 
ing from all these sources and converging to one focus 
and centre of truth — and that is the conclusion, clear 
and definite, that the Atonement is both objective and 
subjective, that it has a Divine as well as a human side. 
This is the one question which to me seems really vital 
in this discussion: — Is the Atonement only a revelation 
of God's love, a peculiarly moving appeal to the human 
conscience, or is it also in addition to that the procur- 
ing cause of the forgiveness of sin and the salvation of 
the sinner? Is there any direct relation between the 
death of Christ and the forgiveness of sin ; viz., the re- 
lation of cause and effect? 

In the last analysis the question resolves itself into 
this: — Does the Atonement remove the barrier to man's 
salvation, and procure for him remission of sins, or 
does it only assure him of God's love and willingness 
to forgive and so bring him to repentance, which is the 
real ground of forgiveness? 

(a) The answer of the Bible is clear: Christ's Atone- 
ment had reference to God as well as to man. 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE A TONEMENT. 133 

This doctrine of an objective side to the Atonement 
is not Pauline only, it is Petrine as well; nay, St. John, 
the Christian mystic, the eagle-winged thinker, who 
surely had soared far above the atmosphere of Judaism, 
is equally emphatic in asserting the mediation and the 
propitiation and the especial value of the blood of 
Christ, while He alone records the Baptist's great word, 
"Behold the Lamb of God/' St. John it is, who af- 
firms, what St. Paul does not affirm, that God forgives 
sin for Christ's sake, " Your sins are forgiven for His 
Name's sake." * 

But, set aside if you will all the Apostolic testimony 
to the forgiveness of sins by the blood of Jesus — set 
aside also the question of Inspiration — the words of the 
Lord Jesus are clear and unequivocal, "This is My 
blood of the New Testament which is shed for the re- 
mission of sins." If any recorded words of Jesus are 
certainly His, these are, and these alone establish the ob- 
jective significance of Christ's death. Nay, were there 
no written Gospel at all, the Lord's Supper would still 
enshrine in its bosom as in a sanctuary the truth that 
Christ shed His blood for the forgiveness of sins. 

(5) Glance at the ethical argument— the argument 
from conscience. Now I claim for conscience a dignity 
and an authority at least co-ordinate with reason. It 
may be called a presentative faculty, whose utterances 
may not be questioned — and I submit that the great 
masters of the science of the conscience are substan- 



* I am surprised that Archdeacon Farrar should affirm that 
we are nowhere taught in the New Testament that we are for- 
given for Christ's sake.— " Symposium on the Atonement," 
p. 75, London, 1883. 



134 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE A TONEMENT. 

tially agreed that it demands reparation or expiation for 
the wrong done, ere its voice of accusation will be hushed 
in the soul. " There is a difficulty in believing that 
we can be forgiven," says Jas. Freeman Clarke. 
"This difficulty lies in the conscience, which is always 
saying that God ought not to forgive without some rep- 
aration made for the injury done to Himself, to the 
universe, and to ourselves." This testimony is clear. 
It cannot be explained away. Mr. Clarke attempts to 
break its force by impeaching its truth, — by denying 
the unity of the moral law. " God's justice is not like 
man's." But this Manselian or Spencerian method is 
destructive of the very basis of morals — it means Pyr- 
rhonism — and we utterly repudiate it. 

But in escaping Scylla, have we not fallen into the 
jaws of Charybdis? Does not ethical science in its 
latest development, tend to negative the possibility of 
Atonement? Is not the difficulty which conscience in- 
terposes insuperable? Doubtless it is from the ground 
of mere naturalism. For nature has no room for an 
atonement, as none for prayer. But surely in this 
Church Congress we stand on the platform of super- 
naturalism. We may at least assume the Incarnation, 
and the Incarnation finds its only sufficient reason in 
the Atonement. Conscience testifies that reparation 
should precede forgiveness— but it sees no ground in 
nature for supposing such a reparation possible. Here 
comes in the revelation in Jesus Christ testifying that 
God Himself has made the expiation which the con- 
science demanded. We appeal therefore with confidence 
to the testimony of conscience — conscience which Mr. 
Martineau invokes so vehemently against the Atone- 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE A TONEMENT. 135 

ment, and from which he expects a cry of indignant 
shame at the immorality of the Christian doctrine. It 
has happened to him as to Balok, the son of Zippor — the 
prophetic voice of conscience refuses to he subsidized 
against the truth of God: "I called thee to curse mine 
enemies, and, lo, thou hast blessed them altogether." 

Sir, my conscience tells me I need two things, per- 
fectly distinct from one another — pardon and renewal 
— and I believe that when I bring my poor paralyzed 
humanity and lay it at the feet of the prophet of Gali- 
lee, He deals with me as He dealt with the paralytic at 
Capernaum ; first, He speaks the words of absolution 
and remission, and then bestows the power to live a 
new life, with the command, " Arise and walk." This 
was the experience of Isaiah when, beholding the 
vision of Jehovah in His holiness and His glory, and 
hearing the trisagion of the seraphim, he cried, 
" Woe is me, for I am undone; because I am a man of 
unclean lips," Then flew one of the seraphims, mes- 
senger of the Divine Love, and touched his lips with a 
coal from the altar of sacrifice, and said, " This hath 
touched thy lips; thine iniquity is pardoned ,and thy 
sin purged." That was the first thing he needed— par- 
don. But with that came power for service, and he 
quickly answered the divine call with the words of self- 
surrender, "Here am I, send me." 

Let me now state some of the points of agreement to 
which, in my judgment, such a method as I have indi- 
cated will conduct us. 

1. The ultimate ground of the Atonement is not the 
justice, but the love of God. 

2. The Atonement was not in order that God might 
"be moved to pity, but because He was so moved. 



136 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT. 

3. The whole Godhead unites in the sacrifice. 

4. Christ's entire earthly activity was sacrificial. 

5. Not the blood of Christ, as Wood, but as the ex- 
pression and synonym of His self-sacrifice, is our hope. 

6. The naked, maternal substitution of one person 
for another is not the true conception of the vicarious 
sacrifice. 

7. The propitiation is not practically effective apart 
from repentance and faith. (See Kom. iii, 25.) 

To these we may probably add the following : 

8. Christ bore the burden, but not, strictly speak- 
ing, the penalty of our sins. 

One word in conclusion. The stately temple of a 
consistent and adequate theory of the Atonement may 
long remain a vision of the Promised Land ; and mean- 
while we may be obliged to content ourselves with 
theories which only partially satisfy the Christian 
reason — frail and perishable tabernacles which can 
stand only for a time ; but of one thing I feel persuaded 
— when that coming Temple shall rise on the shore of 
some future age, three features at least of the present 
tabernacle will survive — the Altar of Sacrifice, the 
blood-besprinkled Mercy-seat, and the interceding High 
Priest. 

In this persuasion I think I may fairly claim the con- 
currence of the venerable Archdeacon Farrar, who has 
just addressed us ; for he has said quite recently, and 
that in print, " In some way the blood of Christ was 
necessarily shed to make it possible for God to forgive 
sin without relaxation of the laws of holiness." * He 



* u The Atonement : a Clerical Symposium," p. 78, -London, 

1883. 



CHBIS TIAN DOCTMINE OF THE A TONEMENT. 13 7 

does indeed shrink from entering within the vale — he 
bows in silent awe, and seems to exclaim, " God is 
great, and we know Him not ! " But, thank God, he 
does not deny that there is a Propitiatory, and that it 
is sprinkled with the blood of the Lamb of God. 



VI. 

THE OBEKAMMEKGAU PASSION 
PLAY : A STUDY. 



44 f, if 1 be lifteO up, will Draw all men unto file/' 

—Jesus Christ. 

1 4 The Story has spoken, and continues to speak, with 
a power far beyond that of any possible attempt at 
theological interpretation. Stand by the Cross with 
Mary if you would feel the spell of the Crucified. Thence 
emanates an influence you will never be able to put fully 
into words. Theological formulae may or may not 
satisfy the intellect, but it is the Evangelic story of the 
Passion itself that moves the heart.'* 

—Alex. Balmain Bruce. 



VI. 

THE OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY : 
A STUDY. 

It is said that when the hordes of Attila overran 
Germany, they shouted, " To Bavaria ! To Bavaria ! 
There dwells the Lord God Himself ! " The Bavarian 
highlands are again invaded in these modern times 
every tenth year by eager multitudes who seem to re- 
peat the cry of Attila's barbarians — not. however, because 
it is a paradise of beauty which they are eager to 
plunder, but because it is a sacred spot, a sanctuary of 
God, at the season when the solemn drama of the 
Passion of the world's Redeemer is performed by the 
villagers of Oberammergau, 

This decennial invasion of that quiet valley in the 
recesses of the Bavarian Alps is a new thing. Until 
Dean Stanley brought back to England the wondrous 
story of the Passion Play fifty years ago, it was almost 
unknown to the world. Those pious peasants had 
been for two centuries performing the sacred drama 
every tenth year, generation after generation, in fulfil 
ment of the vow made by their forefathers in 1634 ; but 
the world took no heed of them or their play. Their 
great mountains shut them in, as in a holy place, and 
at the same time shut out the world. 

It is different now. The great world has penetrated 
behind those rocky barriers. In 1890, the railroad had 
reached Oberau, six miles from Aberammergau ; and 



142 THE OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY. 

now, in 1900, the last stage of the journey to the little 
village is performed in an electric car. The veil of 
their temple has been rent in twain, and their sacred 
mysteries stand revealed to all men's gaze. It is, how- 
ever, a reverent multitude that, week after week, 
during the past summer has approached these myster- 
ies. It comes with hushed step, as to a holy spot, and 
watches the wondrous drama during the eight hours of 
its duration in awed silence, still and worshipful in its 
demeanor, sometimes moved even to tears. 

The object of this essay is to give to those who are 
not able to see the " Passion Spiel" with their own 
eyes some idea of its beauty and its power through the 
impressions received by the writer in witnessing its 
performance ten years ago — impressions almost as 
vivid to-day as then, and producing the conviction, 
still unchanged, that it is a phenomenon whose study 
is not only fruitful in religious and psychological and 
artistic interest, but also highly instructive from the 
theological point of view. 

But first we ought to notice an opinion which used 
to be widely held, and still finds occasional expression, 
that it is irreverent — even blasphemous — to make the 
scenes of the Passion of the Kedeemer the subject of 
dramatic representation. The religious feeling, it is 
alleged, is especially shocked and scandalized by the 
spectacle of a sinful man daring to personate the Son 
of God upon the stage. 

Now the validity of this criticism depends entirely 
upon the silently assumed position that the spirit and 
the motives which usually inspire the drama are pres- 
ent in the Passion Play at Oberammergau, Such, 



THE OBEEAMMEBGAU PASSION PLAY. 143 

however, is not the case. The dramatization is carried 
out from beginning to end in a most reverent and reli- 
gious spirit ; and with the evident intention of glorify- 
ing God's goodness in giving His Son for the redemp- 
tion of mankind. This, we think, is questioned only 
by persons who judge in ignorance of the facts. 
Those who have actually witnessed the play with one 
voice unite in the opinion we have expressed above. 
As to the motives of gain playing any substantial part 
in the representation, its possible dimensions may be in- 
ferred, first, from the insignificant compensation re- 
ceived by the chief actor, * who takes the part of the 
Christus, and, secondly, from the fact that the villagers 
have repeatedly refused large pecuniary offers to give 
the Passion Play in some of the large cities, t 

But if the religious motive of the play is conceded, 
as unquestionably it must be, upon what principle can 
it be maintained that the representation of the scenes 
of the Passion by men and women in action is either 
blasphemous or irreverent ? What is the Passion Play 
after all but an attempt to make vivid and real to the 
beholder the scenes of that Divine Tragedy of the 
World's Redemption ? What but a witness-bearing, in 
the most impressive and effective manner, to the great 



* In 1850 Tobias Flunger received 60 florins (about $25) and 
in 1870 Josef Mayer had 160 florins ($64) for the same part 
for the entire season. No doubt the more frequent presenta- 
tion of the play in later years accounts for the increase of the 
sum paid. 

t In 1870 they were offered 100,000 florins to give it in 
London, and in 1S73 they refused an offer of 60,000 florins to 
give it in Vienna. 



144 THE OBEBAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY. 

facts of the Cross and Passion? What but a most 
moving exhibition of the Death and Sacrifice of the 
Son of God? Let it be asked, If Kaphael and Kubens 
and Michael Angelo may represent the scenes of Cal- 
vary on canvas or in marble, without irreverence, why 
may not these peasants of Bavaria, whose lives are far 
freer from reproach, represent those same scenes, by 
act and word, in their own persons? Is it, then, not 
the actors, but the acting — the representation — of the 
Story of Eedemption to which exception is taken? 
But it is constantly represented without offense and 
without criticism by artists and musicians and orators! 
Or is it the mode of the representation — the instruments 
employed? But surely the human voice and the 
human hand and the human form are as fitting instru- 
ments for such a representation as the marble of the 
sculptor, or the pigment of the painter, or the keys of 
the organ, or the gestures of the orator! And yet good 
people who circulate, through their Sunday School 
lesson-leaflets, cheap and wretched wood-cuts of the 
Christ — of His miracles — of His Passion — of His Cruci- 
fixion—of His Ascension — which are an offense both to 
artistic and to religious feeling, are scandalized at the 
careful and conscientious and altogether wonderful and 
impressive representation of tliese same great subjects 
in the scenes of the Passion Play! 

There remains the objection that no mortal man can, 
without blasphemy, personate the Son of God. But, 
in reply, it may be asked, Was not Jesus Christ the 
Son of Man as well as the Son of God? Was not that 
the title which he generally applied to Himself? And 
was He not truly and really a man — the Man of men— 



THE OBEBAMMEBGAU PASSION PLAY. 145 

the ideal Man? Who, then, could so fitly represent Him 
as one of the sons of men, of whom He said, Ye are 
my brethren? May not a living man, with body, soul, 
and spirit, as innocently personate Him, as a block of 
marble carved by the sculptor, or a piece of canvas 
painted in His likeness, or a word-painting in some 
Life of Christ? 

The best answer, however, to the objections alluded 
to is found in the effect of the Passion Play upon those 
who witness it. Never have we seen in a Christian 
Church even on good Friday, such a reverent assembly 
as the multitude that crowded the ample seats of the 
Theatre at Oberammergau. We can well believe that 
if any came to scoff they remained to pray, and can 
quite understand the remark of an eminent American 
Presbyterian minister, that the day he spent there was 
the most profitable of his three months' stay in Europe. 
Nor are we surprised that another distinguished divine 
should have come home impressed with the importance 
of the more frequent preaching of the Cross and Pas- 
sion of the Lord. 

It may add force to the above views to state that 
when the present writer visited Oberammergau, ten 
years ago, his opinion was by no means settled upon 
this question. He feared that the pristine simplicity 
of the villagers and the religious motif of their acting 
might have been corrupted by the commercial spirit 
which was said to have invaded the quiet valley. That 
deep religious feeling — that pure and fervent faith, — 
which had inspired the actors hitherto, and had re- 
deemed the Passion Play from any taint of irreverence, 
could hardly have been preserved under the secular 



146 THE OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY. 

conditions which, rumor said, now environed its pro- 
duction. A stage manager from the Koyal Theatre at 
Munich instead of the simple peasant priest, Father 
Daisenberger, who had for nearly forty years been the 
presiding genius of the play! This alone, one thought, 
not to speak of other features, must break the spell 
which had hitherto captivated the most reverent and 
religious minds in witnessing the play. 

Apprehensions like these were, it must be confessed, 
strengthened by what we saw and heard the afternoon 
of our arrival. At Oberau, the then railway terminus, 
we were met by a crowd of vehicles whose drivers car- 
ried whips with red and yellow streamers, designating 
respectively Cook's and Gaze's conveyances. People 
ran hither and thither in search of an empty carriage 
or a vacant seat. " Kutshers " who wore the livery of 
neither of the great masters of tourists were shouting 
" ein spanner zu haben," or " zwei spanner zu haben." 
Indignant travelers (ourselves of the number) who could 
find no places remonstrated with the great men in 
blue uniform who represented the monarchs of travel. 
Then, arrived in the pretty little village, secluded 
hitherto from the noisy world, — its inhabitants given 
up to simplest pursuits of haymaking and wood-carving, 
— remote from the vulgar rivalry of money-getting, — 
how it jarred upon one's feelings to see the street one 
vast caravansary of tourists, jostling one another in 
their eagerness to find accommodations, bargaining 
with the householders for ten or twelve marks a day, 
or crowding the shops where paper-cutters and cruci- 
fixes, jumping-jack dolls and crosses were piled up in- 
discriminately on the counters. Or, worse than this, 



THE OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY. 147 

how like a profanation it seemed to find the road to the 
scene of the Passion Play invaded and taken possession 
of by a motley crowd of petty traffickers from many 
lands, who had erected their booths and were loudly 
recommending their wares on every side— shell work 
from Naples, sausages hanging in strings or " fizzing " 
in the frying-pan, photographs, wood-carving, fruit, 
sandwiches, beer, — even while thousands of men, wo- 
men and children pressed in unbroken column to wit- 
ness the Tragedy of Calvary! With these sights 
before one's eyes, and these sounds in one's ears, of 
what avail was it that the Kofel Spitz lifted its impos- 
ing form, crowned with a silver gleaming Cross, at the 
entrance of the valley, as if to say to all comers, " This 
is a consecrated spot! This is the Temple of the Lord! 
Let all the earth keep silence before Him! " 

So impressed, and with such thoughts uttering 
themselves in our minds, we reached the theatre. Four 
hours later, when we came out at the midday recess, 
all the secular impression was gone. However the 
commercial spirit might have invaded the streets of the 
little town, with their motley crowd of traffickers from 
other lands, it had not touched the solemn drama 
itself, nor those who took part in it; and if its troubled 
tide surged up to the very threshold of the scenes of 
the Passion Play at Oberammergau, we may remem- 
ber that this was only a repetition of what occurred in 
Jerusalem and on the hill of Calvary itself. 

But we have lingered too long on this perhaps 
hardly-needed vindication of the propriety and rever- 
ence of the " Passion-Spiel. " Let us approach now 



148 THE OBEEAMMEHGA U PA SSION PL A Y. 

the Play itself. The Sunday morning (let us suppose) 
has arrived; and at five o'clock the booming of the 
village cannon rouses villagers and visitors, and ad- 
monishes them to prepare for the great occasion by 
attending mass in the village church, or by their own 
private devotions. A little before eight we reach the 
theatre, where the living streams converge in one vast 
sea of human beings. Every one of the five thousand 
seats is occupied, and hundreds of people are standing on 
either side against the wooden walls— and, as the event 
proves, there they will stand during the eight hours 
that the play continues. Perhaps twenty-five hundred 
of the seats are under cover — the rest have no roof but 
the blue sky (let their occupants be thankful that it is 
blue !). Apparently at least half of the multitude is 
composed of men, and the great majority are from 
other lands than Bavaria. Cosmopolitan the crowd is 
indeed ! There are jolly French peres, fat German 
priests, English clergymen of the various well-known 
types, in fact, " geistlieher," of every land and of every 
persuasion. Our own countrymen are not so numer- 
ous now (late in September) as earlier; but the English 
are there in great numbers, from Cabinet ministers 
and nobles to the veriest cockneys. The peasants, too, 
from the vicinage, and a goodly number who have 
tramped from afar many a weary mile, are to be seen in 
their striking and picturesque dress — the women with 
head-dresses marvelous to behold. But now — precisely 
at eight o'clock — the solemn mountains echo again to 
the booming of the cannon (the signal that the play is 
about to begin), and in an instant the multitude is 
hushed to silence, while all eyes are directed to the 



THE OBEBAMMEEGAU PASSION PLAY. 149 

stage, whose frontispiece presents a picture of Christ 
surrounded by poor and suffering people, with this in- 
scription, " Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you Best." Could our eyes 
penetrate the curtain that hangs before the great cen- 
tral stage, we should see all the players — men, women 
and children, to the number of five or six hundred, as- 
sembled together with their pastor and engaging in si- 
lent prayer before the play begins. 

There are five distinct places of action for the play- 
ers : " the proscenium for the chorus, for processions 
and the like ; the central stage for the tableaux vivants, 
and the usual dramatic scenes; the palace of Pilate; the 
palace of Annas; and the streets of Jerusalem," — all set 
in a magnificent framework of natural scenery — moun- 
tains and valleys and flowery meadows, the whole pre- 
sided over by the cross-crowned Kofel Spitz. 

The Play itself consists of eighteen acts, and each act 
is preceded by a tableau vivant, representing some 
scene from the Old Testament, typical or prophetic 
of the scene from the Life of Christ which is about 
to be given on the stage. Father Daisenberger, the 
priest and pastor of Oberammergau, to whose patient 
genius the high degree of artistic merit which the 
play has attained is so largely due, declared that the 
great object he and his co-laborers had in view was to 
present the story of Christ's Passion in its connection 
witn the types and figures and prophecies of the Old 
Testament, so that the spectators might realize that 
Jesus Christ is "the central figure of the inspired vol- 
umes." 

Nothing perhaps in the whole drama is more artistic 



150 THE OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY. 

than these tableaux. Each is a study in itself, — the ad- 
mirable grouping, the pose of the figures, the care- 
fully studied dress of each of the actors, and the 
marble-like stillness of all, even the little children, who 
participate. 

But to return. At the sound of the cannon a chorus 
advances to the front of the stage. It consists of ten 
men and fourteen women, seven of the latter (sopranos) 
on the right of the line, the ten men in the midst (five 
tenors and five bassos) and on the left the remaining 
seven women (contraltos). Their dress is simple but 
beautiful, and the colors strikingly harmonious. Each 
wears a white tunic, edged with gold, and tied loosely 
round the waist, with a long flowing colored mantle 
thrown over the shoulders, one end of which is caught 
up at the waist. Each wears also a golden tiara on 
the head. They are called the Chorus of Schutzgeister, 
or guardian angels, whose office is to interpret to the 
spectators the meaning of the tableaux which preface 
each scene of the Passion, to explain the typical sig- 
nificance of the Old Testament events which these 
represent, and so to prepare the mind for the great 
drama as it is unfolded before us. Thus they fulfil 
the office of the Chorus in the Greek drama. But they 
have a higher function; they suggest the angelic beings 
who "desire to look into » the mysteries of Eedemp- 
tion, and who are also God's ministers and interpreters 
to men. 

When they have advanced to the front of the stage, 
in the prelude to the First Act, the Ghoragus explains 
the purpose of the Play; viz., the representation of 
the Drama of Redemption, which is now to be fore- 



THE OBERAMMEEGAU PASSION PLAY. 151 

shadowed in two tableaux, the Expulsion of Adam and 
E-ve from Paradise, and the Adoration of the Cross. 
Then while the hidden orchestra plays solemn music, 
adapted to the theme, the chorus catches up the score, 
and sings, in a feeling manner and with the deepest 
religious spirit, of the sacred scene and of the senti- 
ments it inspires in these angelic minds. And now the 
line of the Shutzgeister breaks in the middle, and, as 
the curtain rises, revealing the tableau, they retire 
with stately movement to the right and left of the 
stage in two semicircles, where they continue their 
descriptive or reflective song till the curtain falls, when 
they resume their places in front of the stage. 

The effect of the action and the singing of this 
chorus of guardian angels, or "spirit-singers/' is 
deeply impressive, and, to our thinking, beyond criti- 
cism. So dignified in bearing, so majestic in move- 
ment, so reverent in manner, so absorbed in the sacred 
themes they describe, so completely self -forgetful! 
Simple peasants they are, but surely possessed of a 
native dignity which is exalted and ennobled by a 
genuine faith in the events they describe and whose 
divine meaning they realize. 

This chorus will be acknowledged,by all who witnessed 
the Play, one of its most beautiful and impressive fea- 
tures, but to us it appears besides to perform an ex- 
tremely important function in the action of the drama. 
It gives an exquisite setting to each scene. It frames 
them effectively. It drapes the tableaux, so to speak, 
in poetry and music; and at the same time it casts upon 
the whole the radiance of a heavenly light. We see 
the Passion from an angelic point of view, by the instru- 



152 THE OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY. 

mentality of these heavenly beings, whose rapt utter- 
ances interpret to us in advance the meaning of each 
of the wondrous scenes of the Passion. And so it is 
brought about that each, as it is set on the stage, is ex- 
hibited in its true spiritual perspective, and taken by this 
means out of the category of common events. Hence 
it is that the vivid realism of the "Passion-Spiel" 
does not militate against its spiritual import. 

When one looks at Muncaksy's picture of Christ be- 
fore Pilate, one is so overpowered by its rugged human- 
ness, its everyday secular aspect, that it is with diffi- 
culty any hold can be retained on the divine side of the 
scene. Perhaps Josef Mayer's personation of the 
Christ is (in some parts of the Play) just as utterly 
human and unsuggestive externally of the Divine Per- 
sonality; but it has that which the picture cannot have, 
— it is seen in the light cast upon it by the Chorus of 
Guardian Angels, both by their sentiments and by 
their sacred music. The older masters represented 
the Son of Man with a halo of heavenly glory round 
his head, and so sought to convey the impression of 
His divinity. Pastor Daisenberger seems to have 
aimed at attaining the same effect, — he casts a halo 
round the sacred head of Jesus by the instrumentality 
of this Chorus of spirit-singers. 

But now the chorus disappears and the action of the 
great holy drama itself begins. The subject of the 
First Act is the entry of Christ into Jerusalem on 
Palm Sunday. Distant sounds are heard of a great 
multitude descending the slope of Olivet, shouting 
and singing as they approach. At length the proces- 
sion is seen advancing — a crowd of at least five hundred 



THE OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY. 153 

persons — men, women and children of all ages, waving 
palm branches and singing Hosanna to the Son of 
David. In the midst is Jesus, seated upon the ass, a 
noble figure, tall of stature, majestic in mien, with long 
hair of jet black flowing over his shoulders. The 
man who personates him, Josef Mayer, has been pre- 
paring for it all his life. His absorbing thought and 
aim during many years has been that he may fitly fill 
this grand role. The result is most impressive. It is, 
to quote the language of a great dramatist, "as if some 
mediaeval painting had been endowed with life." 

It is natural to compare this scene with the great 
picture of Dore upon the same theme. They have 
many features in common, but the verdict is not 
doubtful, that the villagers of Oberammergau have 
surpassed the great French painter, both in artistic 
effect and in the depth and power of the impression 
their representation produces. Nothing could be finer 
than the scene when the Kedeemer, still seated on the 
ass, raises his hand as if to bless the people, and at the 
moment the multitude with one impulse break forth 
in the strains of the beautiful Hosanna Chorus, 

HeilDir! HeilDir! O David's Sohn! 
Heil Dir! Heil Dir! Der Vater Thron 

Gebiihret Dir, 
Der in des Hochsten Namen kommt, 
Dem Israel entgegenstromt, 

Dich preisen wir. 

Hosanna! der im Himmel wohnet, 
Der sende alle Huldauf Dich. 
Hosanna ! der dort oben thronet 
Erhalte uns Dich ewiglich 

Heil Dir, etc. 



154 THE OBEBAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY. 

Another striking scene follows — the cleansing of the 
Temple, — where the same consummate art is exhibited, 
in depicting on the one hand the indignation of Christ 
against the profanation of His Father's House as, with 
commanding authority yet without loss of dignity, He 
drives the traffickers out of the Temple Courts, and on 
the other the confusion and helpless fury of these last, 
as they see their tables overturned, their jars dashed 
to the ground, their doves released, and their money 
scattered over the pavement. 

With great skill and originality Father Daisenberger 
has seized upon this incident as the key to the plot for 
the destruction of Christ, as at once rousing the 
bitter hatred of those whose gains are thus rudely 
interfered with, and at the same time showing up the 
fierce jealousy of the priesthood by the assertion of 
such absolute authority over the Temple in which they 
were the recognized masters. It is now that the high 
priests Caiaphas and Annas first appear upon the 
stage. They enter, followed by the priesthood and the 
enraged merchants, and demand by what authority 
Jesus has done these things; and one sees, as they re- 
tire in impotent fury, discomfited by his reply, that 
the plot is on foot which will find its denouement in 
the bloody Cross of Calvary. 

So ends the first Act. We have given this brief de- 
scription of it as an example of the method of treat- 
ment followed throughout the drama. It would not 
be possible, within our limits, to attempt a similar de- 
lineation of the seventeen other Acts which follow. 
They are: Act. II., The Council of the Sanhedrim, 
when it is decreed that Christ must die ; Act. III., 



THE OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY. 155 

The Anointing at Bethany, and the Parting between 
Jesus and His Mother (one of the three traditional in- 
cidents in the whole compass of the drama) ; Act IV., 
The Last Journey to Jerusalem; Act V., The Last 
Supper (introduced by a marvelous tableau, represent- 
ing the giving of Manna in the Wilderness, and par- 
ticipated in by more than four hundred persons); Act 
VI. , Judas before the Council, bargaining to betray 
his Master; Act VIL, The Agony in the Garden of 
Gethseinane. With this the first part of the play is 
concluded, and an intermission of an hour and a half 
follows. Then follows: Act VIIL, Christ Before An- 
nas; Act IX., Christ before Caiaphas, with the Denials 
of Peter; Act X., The Kemorse of Judas ; Act XL, 
Christ Before Pilate; Act XII., Christ Before Herod ; 
Act XIII., The Scourging of Christ; Act XIV., The 
Sentence of Death; Act XV., Christ Bearing His 
Cross; Act XVI., The Crucifixion; Act XVII. , Christ 
in the Sepulchre, followed by the Eesurrection; Act 
XVIII., The Ascension. 

The realism of the Passion Play at Oberammergau 
is intense and marvelous. The spectator becomes one 
of the men who lived eighteen hundred years ago and 
witnessed the Passion. He sees Jerusalem itself, its 
streets, its dwellings, its people. He feels the throb- 
bing of its passionate life. The priests, the merchants, 
the mob, are wholly Eastern in dress, in spirit. One 
breathes the very atmosphere of Palestine in following 
the Acts of the great drama. Afterwards, when the 
spell has been broken, one wonders how those simple 
peasants could so admirably represent the emotional 
life of the East. 



156 THE OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY. 

Some of the characters stand out in strong relief, 
and impress themselves powerfully upon the beholder. 
Of these Caiaphas, Nathanael, and Pilate, also Mary, 
the mother of Jesus, are specially noteworthy. The 
delineation of the character and motives, the crime and 
remorse of Judas is very powerful, and the acting of 
the part superb. Nothing more terrible or more 
tragic than the final scene of his despair and suicide 
can be conceived. 

As to the character of the Ohristus, the crux of the 
whole drama, we must certainly yield high praise to 
Josef Mayer's impersonation.* His was a majestic 
figure, by reason not only of his lofty stature, but of 
his noble bearing and his manifestly overmastering 
sense of the eternal relation of all his acts and words. 
He seemed to move and speak in the atmosphere of 
the supernal world. Only one who strongly realized 
the divine glory of the Christ and His Passion could 
have acted the part as he did. And yet, for the first 
half, at least, of the play, we felt a sense of disappoint- 
ment in the representation of Jesus— just as one always 
does in the pictures of Christ, even those that are from 
the hand of the great masters. Mayer's voice seemed 
to lack the tenderness and sympathy which belong to 
the compassionate Redeemer, and which was so much 
praised in Tobias Flunger, who took the part m 1850. 



* Maver took the same part in 1870, 1871, 1880, and 1890. 
His age and grizzled beard rendered him unfit for the part in 
1900, and it has been taken by Anton Lang. Almost the only 
important part which has been taken this year by the same 
actor who performed it in 1890, is that of St. John by Peter 
Rendl. 



THE OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY. 157 

He appeared, too, a trifle too stiff and stately in his 
mien. One was always conscious that it was a person- 
ation, and could not forget that it was Mayer who was 
speaking. 

But now we have to record a strange fact. When 
the shadows of the Divine tragedy waxed deeper — 
when the most sacred scenes were reached — when si- 
lence and patient suffering were to be portrayed — this 
wood-carver's personation of the Saviour of the world 
became more and more true, more and more affecting 
and satisfying. From the moment when He came 
forth at Pilate's tribunal crowned with thorns and 
wearing the purple robe, on to the tragic end where He 
bowed His head and gave up the ghost, the Christ whom 
we saw on the Oberammergau stage was a very mighty 
and moving impersonation of the Christ of the Gospels, 
as we have been wont to conceive Him. Neither 
painter, nor sculptor, nor poet has ever been able to 
make us approach so near to the ideal image of the 
Christ as did this wood-carver of the Bavarian high- 
lands by his marvelous impersonation. 

Yet this we must further say, some of the scenes 
were almost too realistic to look upon, and perhaps too 
sacred to be successfully represented. The agony in 
the Garden, at least, would have been better omitted, 
or, at any rate, seen at a great distance and among the 
shadows of the olive trees. 

It is difficult to convey an impression of the total ef- 
fect of this most wonderful dramatization. We can 
only say that when all was over, and one looked back 
upon it, it stood out as the noblest triumph of conse- 
crated art possible to be conceived. No picture or 



158 THE OBEBAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY. 

statue at all approaches it, nor any play ever seen else- 
where, in the breadth and depth and power of its artis- 
tic effect. And yet one sees no art — one does not think 
of art. "I have been a pretty constant attendant on 
the theatre," said a middle-aged Englishman to the 
writer of this essay, "and I know Irving's work well, 
but I tell you, at his best, he can never approach what 
I saw yesterday." "And yet," he added, after a pause, 
' ' I saw no acting yesterday." 

In fact it is more like living the Passion than acting 
it. An entire community — fifteen hundred in number, 
of whom about half participated in the Play — is so 
given up to the meditation and realization of the scenes 
of the Divine tragedy, that they seem lifted out of 
themselves and their everyday life, and carried back 
into that first age, to take upon them the forms, the 
garments, the ideas, the life of those who participated 
in those solemn events. 

This is doubtless the secret of the extraordinary 
power of the Passion Play over the spectators — that 
which makes it, what it undoubtedly is, the most re- 
markable dramatization of which we have any record. 
Of its power one may judge from the fact that, week 
after week, audiences of five thousand people sit 
motionless and breathless, utterly rapt and absorbed, 
for the eight hours of the performance, — that is, from 
8 A. m. till nearly 12, and then again from 1.30 p. M. to 
5.30 p. M. — except when the curtain falls between the 
scenes. The weather, we are told, makes no difference 
in the attendance, and it is not uncommon to see 
twenty-five hundred people sitting all those hours in 
the rain without umbrellas. During the more pathetic 



THE OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAT. 159 

scenes the stillness was oppressive. Many wept and 
when the curtain fell it seemed that thousands were 
wiping their eyes. If there was a scoffer there, he 
could not be recognized. We heard of an instance in 
which two unbelievers were so impressed that they fell 
upon their knees in prayer before the performance was 
over. 

So remarkable a phenomenon as is presented by this 
drama, both from an artistic and a psychological point 
of view, demands, however, a fuller and more specific 
explanation. 

In the first place, it is the result of long and most 
elaborate preparation. The highest artistic effects are 
never produced without a deal of painstaking labor. 
We have here no exception to this rule. The actors are 
chosen for the various parts in the last week of De- 
cember of the year before the Play, and from that time 
till the summer arrives, diligent care and study are 
given by all concerned in order to ensure success. All 
the more prominent actors are required to have private 
lessons. No pains are spared : no detail neglected. 

Then we must remember that the Passion Play is 
only one of many dramas which the villagers of these 
Bavarian highlands present upon the same stage. 
When, at the end of the tenth year, the theatre is taken 
down, the stage itself is suffered to remain, and prep- 
arations at once begin for minor plays, both secular 
and religious, which are given by the Oberammer- 
gauers before lesser audiences, chiefly composed of the 
peasants from their own mountains. Among the 
pieces acted by them may be mentioned "The Found- 
ing of the Monastery of Ettal," " The Death of Abel/' 



160 THE OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY. 

and " William Tell." " The Antigone " of Sophocles 
has also been translated from the Greek and adapted 
for presentation at Oberammergau. Thus we have 
to contemplate an entire community engaged almost 
continuously in the study of the dramatic art — there 
is a performance every week during most of the year, 
so that the artistic triumph witnessed every tenth year 
is the consummate flower of the dramatic labors of the 
villagers during the intervening years. 

Another very influential element in the production 
of the Passion Play is to be found in the training the 
villagers receive in their Parish Church. This is in 
fact the training-school and the rehearsal theatre for 
the great decennial drama. It has long been the 
custom at Oberammergau to represent many of the 
sacred events of the Christian Year dramatically in 
the church and in the churchyard, and not a few of 
the scenes which we see on the stage in the " Passion- 
Spiel " have been presented already by the people many 
times before in connection with their religious cere- 
monies. For example, Christ's Triumphal Entry into 
Jerusalem, with which the Play opens, and which so 
amazes and captivates the beholder by its marvelous 
beauty and artistic perfection, is largely a repetition of 
the Church procession on Palm Sunday. 

But we must go even farther back than this to ac- 
count for this remarkable phenomenon, whose ex- 
planation we seek to grasp. The village-school plays 
a not unimportant part in the evolution of the Passion 
Play. The teachers must be skilled in music,— com- 
posers if possible,— in order that the children may 
be taught to sing ; and it is part of their duty to prac- 



THE OBEBAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY. 161 

tice these pupils in singing, rehearsing, and declaiming 
the parts which they are to take. Thus the prepara- 
tion for the Play, whose fame has gone out through all 
Christendom, begins with the little children in the 
parish school house. 

To the village school must be added the School of 
Design where wood-carving is carefully and systemat- 
ically taught. It is obvious that the influence of such 
a school would show itself in the development of ar- 
tistic taste, and the acquisition by its students of a 
just sense of form and pose. In confirmation of this 
we are told that the best actors in the Passion Play 
have been, almost without exception, wood-carvers, — 
men of greater intelligence and better education than 
the peasants, or agricultural laborers, who are fitted 
only for the less important roles. 

But these influences, important as they are, are not 
sufficient to account for the artistic perfection which 
we see in the Passion Play. There is unmistakeable 
evidence here of one master mind, and one master 
hand, giving unity and consistency to this wonderful 
creation, guiding the development of the drama, and 
combining its various parts so as to produce the har- 
monious result which is a necessity in every great 
triumph of art. This personal influence is found in the 
genius and laborious devotion of Father Daisenberger, 
who was from his youth a devotee of music and the 
religious drama, and who, appointed priest and pastor 
of Oberammergau in the year 1845, threw all his 
energies and talents enthusiastically into the resolve to 
perfect the Passion Play. This he did from the 
highest religious motive : " I undertook the labor/' 



162 TBE OBEBAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY. 

he says, "with the best will, for the love of my 
Divine Kedeemer, and with only one object in view ; 
namely, the edification of the Christian world." It 
was as the pastor and father of the community that 
he took the work in hand, with a truly extraordinary 
zeal, at once artistic and religious. He it was who re- 
vised and rewrote the text of the Play, who carefully 
trained his parishioners for their dramatic vocation, and 
in short fulfilled all the functions of stage manager. 
The first representation under his direction took place 
five years after his incumbency began, that is to say in 
1850, and it is from that year the great reputation of 
the play must be dated. He was a close student of the 
drama, and himself wrote a number of biblical and 
historical plays. Taking the strophe and antistrophe 
of the Greek drama as his model, he arranged the 
part, than which nothing is more beautiful in the 
whole play, — that of the Chorus of Shutzgeister, com- 
posing also the speeches of the Choragus. For thirty- 
eight years he continued this remarkable combination 
of dramatic and pastoral duties, beloved by the whole 
community, their leader and patriarch, as well as their 
priest and pastor. The title of the volume of sermons 
which he published is in harmony with the chief 
labor of his life, — "The Fruits of Observations on the 
Passion." 

No philosophical explanation of the genesis of the 
Ttraorrlinary phenomenon witnessed at Oberammer- 
rui would be at all adequate, however, which left out 
of account the influence of heredity. We see here 
the fruitage of centuries of devotion to the consid- 
eration and realization of the Divine Theme. All the 



THE OBERAMMEEGAU PASSION PLAY. 1G3 

best actors of the nineteenth century, supposing them 
to have been contemporaries, and to have united in 
presenting this Play, could not have produced this 
result. The deep religious spirit, which these sim- 
ple villagers have inherited and which is the deep 
undertone of the whole drama, would be lacking. 
What one beholds on that stage is the evolution of 
three — or according to some authorities six — centuries 
of devotion by an entire community to the realiza- 
tion of the great thoughts and events of Christ's 
Passion. Moreover the genius, the ambition, the ener- 
gies, as well as the faith of the villagers, have been 
concentrated in this one channel. The monks of the 
cathedral-building ages attained their marvelous and 
unapproachable success in ecclesiastical architecture! 
and created those noble piles which are the wonder 
and the envy of the architects of all succeeding gene- 
rations, not because those ages were in advance of 
later ones in civilization and genius, but because the 
talent and the energies of the monks and of those who 
labored with them were so entirely engrossed with the 
one aim and purpose and ambition of cathedral 
building. Upon the same principle we explain the 
unapproached success of the villagers of Oberammer- 
gau. The chief intellectual ambition of the entire 
community is to achieve success in the Passion Play. 
Cut off by their great mountains from the ambitions 
and strifes of the great world, they have preserved 
their hereditary devotion to this one sacred object. 
It has continued the theme which most deeply inter- 
ests them, which absorbs, more than any other, their 
thoughts and their energies. Descending from father 



104 THE OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY. 

to son for so many generations, it may almost be said 
to have become a birthright of these peasants to 
realize vividly these sacred scenes, and so their por- 
trayal of them becomes easy, natural, without self-con- 
sciousness, without straining after effect. The lives of 
the actors also are frugal and virtuous — a man of 
vicious life is never suffered to take part in the play — 
and the acting is reverent in every line and letter, nor 
does any one of the participants seem conscious of act- 
ing a part. The dramatization of the Passion has in 
short become to this little community, through va- 
rious complex influences, at once a passion and a reli- 
gion. 

We remarked at the outset that the Passion Play at 
Oberammergau possessed a theological as well as an 
artistic and psychological interest. It is only possible 
to indicate this in the briefest possible way, and in two 
particulars. The first is the striking circumstance 
that there is an entire absence from the scenes of this 
drama of any of the distinctive features of modern 
Komanism. From beginning to end there is nothing 
which betrays the fact that the actors are members of 
the Roman Communion. There is not even an uncon- 
scious reverence done to the Virgin Mary ; there is no 
crossing of themselves by the Apostles ; there are 
no genuflections; there is no intimation of the dogma of 
transubstantiation; no hint of saint worship; nor any 
sign that St. Peter was the Prince of the Apostles, or 
was to be the Vicar of Christ on earth— but an entirely 
faithful reflection of the evangelic narrative in all its 
simplicity. Three traditional features only we noticed 
as exceptions to this remark, viz., the parting between 



THE OBEBAMMEBGAU PASSION PLAT. 165 

Jesus and his Blessed Mother ; the incident of St. Ve- 
ronica giving her handkerchief to the exhausted Christ 
on the Via Dolorosa, and the introduction of Ahasuerus, 
who became the wandering Jew of tradition. 

One comes away from Oberammergau with the 
strong impression that the faith of the peasants in that 
mountain valley is much simpler— more truly a Gospel 
faith— than in most other Eoman Catholic communi- 
ties. As the Canon of the mass, coming down from 
a period long anterior to the emergence of the dogma 
of transubstantiation, does not embody that dogma, 
but is really primitive in its teaching, so the text of the 
Passion Play, taken in large part from the Gospels 
themselves, has preserved among these villagers the 
simpler faith of the primitive Church. The Keligion 
of the Eoman Church in Italy, in Spain, in Ireland, 
and in many other parts of the globe is predominantly 
the religion of Mary rather than of Jesus. This does 
not appear to be the case at Oberammergau, and we 
must attribute the fact largely to the influence of the 
Passion Play, which to so large an extent occupies the 
mind and heart of the people with the Christ and Him 
Crucified. 

The other feature of theological interest which we 
notice in the Drama at Oberammergau is found in the 
impressive illustration which it presents of the power 
of the Cross of Christ upon the heart of mankind. 
Surely His great word of prophecy finds here a striking 
fulfilment — " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men 
unto Me." It is not too much to say that no other 
stage — no other actors — no other play — could draw 
such multitudes (one hundred and fifty thousand in a 



166 THE OBERAMMEBGAU PASSION PLAY. 

single season), from so great distances, from so many 
lands, of so many nationalities, and at such expense of 
time and money; or could hold them for so many hours 
in rapt attention. No one, we think, could have wit- 
nessed the profound religious impression produced upon 
those multitudes (fully half of which, as we have already 
said, were men), without realizing afresh that the 
Story of the Cross holds still a mighty sway over the 
heart of the world, and that it will never be lifted up 
in vain as the symbol of the Divine Power to pardon 
and to save. 

It is this consideration which has seemed to justify 
the insertion of this Essay in a volume devoted other- 
wise exclusively to theological subjects. We give it a 
place next to that upon the Christian Doctrine of 
Atonement, because it is the Fact of the Atonement, 
embodied in the Passion and so impressively exhibited 
in the Passion Play, that is, in the last analysis, the 
explanation, at once of the marvelous success of the 
Drama at Oberammergau, and of its unapproached 
effect upon the multitudes who witness it. 



VII. 

THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG 
LITERATURES. 



"The Bible was not taken as God had given it. A 
system was set above it y which was not in harmony with 
the real conditions on which it is given. They were 
blind to the imperfections which God had allowed to re- 
main in His Word. This extreme which takes the Bible 
not as it is, but as men would fain have had it, I do not 
intend to defend: I charge it indeed with apart of the 
guilt of those who think themselves justified as its oppo- 
nents in representing and condemning strict faith in 
the Bible as scientific dishonesty or blind narrowness of 
mind. . . . We do not possess a canon that is absolutely 
free from mistake ; nor indeed do we require it. What 
we require is a record of Revelation absolutely true, and 
that we possess in the Scriptures. 11 — Auberlen. 

" We give up the claim of perfect freedom from error 
for the Bible, but only in such things as are really indif- 
ferent to salvation and the doctrine of the Gospel. 11 

— Stier. 

" The old, and what may be called the stereotyped 
method of treating this subject. . . . was to assume what 
is called the verbal inspiration of the Bible. The prev- 
alence of this theory shows how unsafe it is to place im- 
plicit reliance upon any authority which has acquired its 
title simply through its having been allowed to remain 
undisturbed through long periods of time. 11 — Gladstone. 



VII. 

THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITERATURES. 

It is the purpose of this essay to direct attention 
to some of the characteristics which mark the Bible 
as unique and peculiar/ sui generis, among the world's 
literatures. On such a theme originality will not be 
expected. The mine has been already explored times 
without number. We can only hope to refresh the 
reader's memory of the rich and varied treasures it con- 
tains, and possibly so to group and arrange some of its 
gems as to deepen the impression of their beauty. 
At the outset, let it be observed that we take up 
the Bible as a literature, and wish to compare it with 
other literatures. We shall not approach the subject 
from the point of view of the theologian, and though 
heartily accepting both, we shall, for the most part, 
leave entirely on one side the inspiration and divine 
authority of the Bible. It is as literature that we 
shall regard it, and we shall invite attention to certain 
facts and phenomena that differentiate it broadly from 
all other literatures of mankind. 

In the first place, we would ask you to observe the 
remarkable variety of the forms in which this litera- 
ture is cast. What is this book? We call it the Bible, 
" the Book/' but when we open and examine it, we 
find it is a library containing a multitude of separate 



170 THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITERATURES. 

books by a variety of authors, on a variety of topics 
and in a variety of literary forms. Prose and poetry, 
dialogue and drama, history and biography, are all here. 
Songs, sonnets, odes, hymns, prayers, orations, laws, 
letters, ritual codes, sermons, rhapsodies, prophecies, 
fables, proverbs, parables, these and other forms of 
composition find their examples here. 

Now the Bible is unique in this marvelous variety of its 
contents. Where is there another book which contains 
such various forms of composition, and in such a small 
compass? And then look at the wondrous perfection 
of these literary forms! For charm of style, for simplic- 
ity, for graphic vividness, the narratives of the Bible 
are unrivalled. The imagery of the psalmists is unsur- 
passed. The prophets are masters of a majestic diction 
which literally finds no parallel. The Book of Job has 
no rival among the dramas of the world, either for mar- 
velous poetic beauty or for profound analysis of the 
problem of human suffering. The four evangelists 
stand absolutely alone in the matchless beauty of their 
story, with such strange fascination is it told, so en- 
tirely devoid is it of art or effort, yet so far surpassing art 
itself in its vivid reality. Yes, viewed merely as litera- 
ture, the Bible stands unique among the literatures of 
mankind. If Burke desires a supreme instance of the 
sublime in composition, he turns to the first chapter of 
Genesis. Walter Savage Landor extols it as " contain- 
ing more specimens of genius and taste than any other 
volume in existence." Kousseau confesses the majesty 
of the Scriptures, and pronounces the diction of the 
philosophers, with all its pomp, contemptible in com- 
parison. The greatest poets have sought inspiration in 



THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG L1TERATUBES. 171 

its pages. Shakespeare was deeply indebted to the Bi- 
ble. Dante, like a bee, sucked honey from its pages. 
Milton was its child, nursed at its bosom. The poems 
of Tennyson are saturated with the ideas and the spirit 
of the Scriptures. The genius of Browning lights 
its torch at the same altar of eternal truth. The 
greatest orators of our modern world have been its 
debtors. It is not too much too say that English liter- 
ature owes more to the Bible than to any other influ- 
ence. 

Consider, in the next place, the unity of the Bible. 
This is a most remarkable feature, when we remember 
the great variety of its structure, the multiplicity of 
its authors and the vast tract of time through which 
its composition extended. We think of it as a book : 
it is, in fact, a literature, the product of at least 
fifteen hundred years of Jewish life and history. Here 
are sixty-six books by almost as many authors. "It 
was commenced by Moses in the deserts of Arabia and 
completed by St. John in the Isle of Patmos. Between 
its commencement and its close, entire phases of civili- 
zation appeared and disappeared. To its early penmen 
the very speech of its later writers was unknown, and 
to the authors of its closing half, the dialect of Moses 
and of David had become unintelligible, and yet this 
book, produced in 'such far removed times, in such dis- 
tant places, and by such varied instrumentalities, is 
one, and forms a whole." 

These threescore and six books into which the one 
Book is divided are marked by the individuality of their 
several authors, and stamped with the characteristic 
features of the age and country in which they were 



172 TBE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITERATURES. 

produced; and yet they constitute one living organism 
whose growth extended through a millennium and a 
half. They are the living record of revelation — of 
God's progressive self-revelation to man. Differences 
there are, vast differences between the several books, 
not only in style, in structure, in literary form, but in 
the standards of morality which they severally illus- 
trate, and in the degree in which the nature of God 
and the destiny of man are revealed. But these dif- 
ferences are not contradictions. On the contrary, they 
are consistent with the most complete harmony. They 
are rather different stages of development in the one 
plan and purpose of God. They are different degrees 
of light and knowledge between the dawn and the noon- 
day. They are different phases of the one revelation, 
as when a statue is slowly unveiled from the feet up- 
ward. Thus the law of the structure of the Bible is 
the same as that of the physical universe — the law of 
evolution — theistic evolution. But the very essence of 
that law is the unity of the organism, through all 
its numerous differentiations. 

So here, throughout the structure of the organism 
of Holy Scripture the unity of idea and purpose is 
manifest. To the great problems of the origin of the 
universe and the human race, the meaning of creation, 
the object of human life, the destiny* of man, his duty, 
his relation to the Creator, the Bible gives throughout 
harmonious answers. " Its testimony to truth, virtue, 
goodness and godliness is grandly one. If the book 
itself has no literary structure of symmetry, it har- 
monizes the moral sense of the ages, gives to the 
widely separated periods of history one mind, one 



THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITERATURES. 173 

heart, and one interpretation of the universal aspira- 
tion." * 

Now let it be asked : How can this unity upon the 
deepest and most difficult problems of thought and 
life throughout a great literature which was a thousand 
five hundred years in its growth be explained? There 
can be but one intelligible answer : It was informed 
and ordered in its development by one divine Spirit. 
" Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the 
Holy Ghost." These words of men are, therefore, also 
the Word of God. His finger is as plainly here as on 
the tables of stone given unto Moses on the Mount. 

When we stand before one of these splendid piles 
which the genius of the architects of the middle ages 
reared on the soil of England to the glory of God, and 
see in the same building several different styles of 
architecture, as, for example, the Norman, the Early 
English, the Decorated and the Perpendicular, we are 
infallibly sure that these different parts of the great 
cathedral, erected at different periods, did not harmo- 
niously blend into one design, and together make one 
minster, by accident, but that there was one plan, or 
at least one ideal, one purpose, which governed the 
minds of those who worked on the building in succes- 
sive generations. As surely may we conclude, as we 
see the different books of Holy Scripture of different 
ages of the world combined in one harmonious struc- 
ture, and together constituting one vast cathedral of 
truth to the honor and glory of Almighty God, that 
neither was this unity an accident, but that one plan, one 
purpose, one mind governed and guided the structure 

* Beecher. 



174 THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITERATURES. 

from the foundation stone in Genesis, to the topmost 
spire in Kevelation. But here again is a feature in 
which the Bible stands absolutely alone among the 
literatures of the world. 

Another water-mark on the texture of this fabric of 
Holy Scripture is its Catholicity. There was never a 
book which so marvelously appealed to all classes of 
mankind from the philosopher to the ploughman, 
from the most learned to the most ignorant. " Ho, 
every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters/' 
it cries, and lo, not only the Augustines and the 
Luthers and the Latimers, and the Wesleys, eagerly 
come to slake their thirst at its pure fountain, but 
the Keplers and the Newtons and the Lockes and the 
Faradays drink and are refreshed. It is not only that 
men of the most exquisite literary talent extol it as su- 
perior in genius and taste to any other volume in exis- 
tence ; it is not only that the greatest orators and poets 
have sought in these pages the purest models of diction 
and of style ; it is not only that the most brilliant 
skeptics have confessed its majesty and its beauty ; but 
the point of moment to our present contention is 
that these Scriptures of the Old and New Testament 
have proved themselves capable of ministering illumi- 
nation of soul, as well as comfort and consolation in 
the greatest exigencies of life to men of all classes, of 
all conditions, of all races, and of all ages of the 
world. Thus it is, beyond all comparison, the most 
Catholic of books. It belongs to the world. It speaks 
to the world. It ministers to the world. It inspires 
trie world as no other book does. It has been trans- 
lated into almost every tongue spoken on the globe, 



THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITEBATUBES. 175 

and never yet has it failed to reach some of those mani- 
fold races with its life-giving touch. And yet, from 
what race did this book proceed? From the Jewish 
race! Every one of its writers (with the possible excep- 
tion of Job) was a Jew. That is to say, the most 
Catholic of books proceeds from the narrowest and 
most exclusive of all races! 

We demand of men of science: Is this a natural evolu- 
tion ? "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of 
thistles?" Is there not here the trace — the unmis- 
takable trace of a supernatural hand ? What promise 
or potency did Judaism contain, with its rigid narrow- 
ness, its tribal prejudices, its local limitations, of 
being the fountain-head of a universal religion, that 
should know no difference of race or tribe ? Whose, 
but the hand of the Divine Husbandman, could have 
made the Jewish stock capable of bringing forth such 
a development as Christianity ? But in this feature 
of Catholicity, it is not too much to say that the Bible 
stands supreme and unrivaled. Even Shakespeare 
can bear no comparison with it in its power to speak 
to all races and to all classes and conditions of man- 
kind. 

But again. The sacred literature contained within 
the covers of the Bible is unique in its moral beauty, 
in its spiritual power, in its reflection and incarnation 
of the Divine. There are other sacred books, there 
are other literatures of morals and religion, and some 
of them have been widely influential among mankind. 
We do not deny either the beauty or the value of some 
parts of these other bibles of the nations. We do not 
affirm that God and spiritual truth are shut up in the 



176 THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITERATURES. 

Hebrew and Christian sacred books. Nay, we gladly 
recognize in some of the utterances of the sages, the 
philosophers, the religious teachers outside the pale of 
the Christian Bible, the utterance of the same Spirit 
of truth who speaks in our own sacred Scriptures. 
But what we do affirm is that the Bible stands among 
all other sacred books of the world as man among 
mammals ; as transcendently superior, for example, 
to the Koran or the Zendavesta, or the Buddhist 
Suttas, as man whom God has made in His own image, 
is superior to the ape, or to the horse, or to the 
dog. Doubtless there is light in portions of these 
sacred books, but compared with the light that shines 
in the Bible, it is the pale radiance of the cold starlit 
sky, to the mid-day glory of the sun. 

To justify this unique position which we assign to 
the Bible in comparison with the other sacred books 
of mankind, it is sufficient to appeal to experience— 
the experience of the individual and the experience of 
the ages of history. Leaving out of consideration the 
canons of councils and the dogmas of theologians, 
passing by, also, altogether the weighty arguments for 
its inspiration, we allege it as a fact confirmed by ex- 
perience that the Bible has won for itself a place in the 
minds of men as the Book of God, such as no other 
book has ever done. It commends itself to the hu- 
man conscience. It interprets man's moral nature to 
himself. It reads him the deepest riddles of life. Its 
voice penetrates the secret chambers of the soul, and is 
recognized as a voice of divine authority. It turns 
men away from the paths of vice to the paths of virtue. 

That it is unique in this respect by comparison with 



THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITERATURES. 177 

all other literatures is so plain to an educated man as 
scarcely to require proof. Some years ago when the 
knowledge of the Oriental sacred books was dawning 
on the mind of Europe, there were some who ven- 
tured to compare them not unfavorably with the 
Bible. But who would now venture to make such a 
comparison ? They have been clothed in European 
dress, they have been introduced to the public, but, as 
a recent writer has said, " they are destined to remain 
eternally sealed, save to a select band of Oriental 
scholars/' They are, with few exceptions, but mum- 
mied curiosities to the Western mind ; they will never 
exercise any permanent or important influence over 
the future of Europe ; they will not add one item of 
spiritual truth or moral teaching to the treasure 
which that portion of the globe enjoys. 

And yet the Bible of the Christian Church, which 
has such profound grasp upon the mind and heart of 
Europe, "which has leavened all Western thought, 
which has moulded the legislation and tempered the 
penal code," this Bible is itself a collection of Oriental 
books. Surely we have here a profoundly significant 
fact — a clear proof — indeed that after all it is in the 
waters of Israel, and not in the rivers of Damascus, that 
mankind is to find the cleansing of its leprosy. 

To another unique feature of the Bible, let us in- 
vite your thoughtful attention. We mean the fact, ex- 
plain it as we may, that the Bible is, in a peculiar sense, 
the Book of the English-speaking peoples. It is by 
these peoples that it is most highly prized. It is 
among them that it is most influential. It is chiefly 
through their instrumentality that the Bible isdistrib- 



178 THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITERATURES. 

uted abroard among the nations and peoples and 
tribes of the globe. 

There is a striking ceremony at the coronation of 
the sovereigns of Great Britain in Westminster Abbey 
which fitly symbolizes the peculiar bond between the 
English-speaking people and the Bible. The Holy 
Bible is placed in the monarch's hands with these im- 
pressive words: "Our gracious sovereign! we pre- 
sent you with this Book, the most valuable thing that 
this world affords. Here is wisdom : this is the royal 
law, these are the lively oracles of God. Blessed is 
he that readeth and they that keep and do the things 
contained in it. For these are the words of Eternal 
Life, able to make you wise and happy in this world — 
nay, wise unto salvation, and to be happy forevermore, 
through faith which is in Christ Jesus, to whom be 
glory forever. Amen." 

Now, the English-speaking peoples are the great col- 
onizers of the world. They have spread over the face 
of the globe in the last century with truly marvelous 
rapidity. To illustrate this, consider the following 
statement : At the beginning of this century, the 
English language stood fifth on the list of the seven 
leading languages of civilization. In 1890 English 
had risen to the first place. In 1801 German was 
spoken by 10,000,000 more people than English ; in 
1890 English was spoken by 36,000,000 more than 
German. Then French was spoken by 11,000,000 more 
than English ; now English is spoken by 60,000,000 
more than French. 

And these masterful peoples, whose language is be- 
coming rapidly the commercial language of the world 



THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITERATURES. 179 

and whose combined power is vastly the mightiest on 
the globe, are the great Bible-publishers and Bible-dis- 
tributers of the world. Wherever they go they carry 
the Bible with them. And their zeal for its dissemi- 
nation is such that they lavish time and money and 
labor and learning without stint that they may give 
this book to all peoples and tongues of mankind. 
Surely this is a unique feature in this wonderful book, 
that its destiny is linked so closely with the life and 
the progress of a great race, and that race, the might- 
iest and the most progressive and the most civilized on 
the globe. Is there any other literature that can for 
a moment pretend comparison with the Bible in this 
respect ? 

Again, this marvelous literature stands out unique 
among the literatures of the world in this: that it alone 
has been able to inspire men to undertake the stupen- 
dous enterprise of the world-wide dissemination of one 
book, and in the prosecution of this undertaking, 
gladly to give labor and toil and self-denial and even 
life itself. 

The difficulties of such a task were vast and compli- 
cated. Think of the multitudinous languages and dia- 
lects to be mastered, many of them rude and savage to 
a degree, many of them entirely unknown until the 
zealous missionaries of the cross caught them living 
from the lips of savage tribes, and reduced them to the 
bondage of writing, and formulated the laws of their 
construction. In illustration, recall the story of that 
knightly soul, that Christian hero, Coleridge Patteson, 
— gentleman, athlete, scholar, poet, — sailing in his 
little yacht, The Southern Cross, from island to island in 



180 THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITERATURES. 

Melanesia, swimming ashore alone, mingling on the 
coral strand with the naked, tattooed savages, that he 
might learn their various dialects, reduce them to writ- 
ing and so open the path to translate the Bible into 
their tongues. 

Or take the example of Bishop Steere, who trans- 
lated the Prayer Book and the New Testament, to- 
gether with half of the Old, into the chief of the African 
languages. " He sits at work in his library, a white- 
washed room, with a sloping floor, which has a hole at 
the lower end through which the water, sluiced over it, 
can drain away; its furniture, a table and chair, a few 
cupboards and a bed with mosquito curtains. A thou- 
sand distractions divert him from his work. Visits to 
the schools or the printing presses, superintendence of 
packing and unpacking parcels, planting grass for 
thatch, digging, planting, trimming, prescribing medi- 
cines, directing cookery, attending services, such 
multifarious occupations alternate with correspondence 
and the deepest problems of religious faith and life. 
And amidst all these demands upon his time, the 
bishop plods steadily onwards " in his great work of 
giving the Bible a tongue in which to speak to the 
millions of the dark continent. 

Why is it there are no societies to give Shakespeare, 
or Milton, or Socrates, or Plato to all mankind. Is it 
not because men find in the Bible a pure river of 
water of Life clear as crystal, which heals and saves 
and quickens as no water of Abana or Pharparever 
does. 

Once more. The history of the translations of the 
Bible itself marks it off and distinguishes it from all 



THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITERATURES. 181 

other literatures of mankind. Upon this point we avail 
ourselves of the words of a writer in the British Quar- 
terly Review. He says: " The history of Bible transla- 
tion is unique in the chronicles of literature. Nothing 
at all like it has the world ever known. Begun 2,050 
years ago with the translation of the Seventy for the 
library of the Ptolemies, carried on by believers in 
every age, despite long intervals of apparent indiffer- 
ence, throughout the Christian centuries, the work is 
still pursued amid the conflicting and competing claims 
of a civilization richer to-day in the variety of its intel- 
lectual elements than at any former period, with an 
ever-growing intensity of devotion and breadth of aim. 

"For purely literary interest nothing can compare 
with it. Think of the languages it has embalmed — 
the Hebrew, the Moeso-Gothic, the Old Syriac, the 
Gothic, the Old Slavonic — some to remain the sole 
monuments of the speech of dead and buried nation- 
alities (as in the western churches of Armenia), others 
to awake and speak with a tongue of fire to hearts that 
it alone could move." 

Think of its manifold points of contact with the 
wider knowledge of the nineteenth century, and of the 
light which it has cast directly or indirectly upon 
the deepest problems of geography and ethnography 
and philology; whilst commerce has been largely stimu- 
lated through the investigations of men who have 
labored to make its message intelligible to new-found 
races. " The story is unrivaled in thrilling romance 
and chivalrous endeavor." 

But some one may ask : What is the present-day 
aspect of this matter of Bible translation and dissemi- 



182 THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITERATURES. 

nation? We hear much about the decay of faith, the 
weakening of the hold of the Christian religion upon 
the world. It is not long since Hartmann, Schopen- 
hauer's great disciple and collator ateur, gave utterance 
to a prophecy similar to that of Voltaire a century 
ago; only he gave the Christian religion several cen- 
turies more of life, while the " cleverest man in Europe " 
had given the Bible but one century to survive. Well, 
so far is it from being true that the Bible is a moribund 
book embalming an outworn creed, that it is speaking 
to-day to the peoples and tribes of the earth in more 
than four hundred different tongues, most of which 
translations have been made since the battle of Water- 
loo. " The anxiety to possess the Bible is so universal 
that one edition upon another is exhausted, and it is 
found difficult to keep the supply abreast with the de- 
mand in every quarter of the world. There can be no 
greater mistake than the notion, firmly held by some 
persons, that modern translations of the Bible are the 
idle and useless outcome of a visionary philanthropy, 
which thrusts its unwelcome wares upon indifferent or 
reluctant customers. Despite all facilities for the 
multiplication of copies, the cry is unremmitting for 
larger impressions; whilst the purchase of them by 
natives out of their deep poverty is a guarantee against 
their destruction at the bidding of priest or Moollah, 
which mere gratuitous distribution cannot command." 
u No fact is more striking in the history of Bible 
dissemination in China than this: That as soon as 
gratuitious circulation was replaced by the sale of the 
Chinese Scriptures, the total number of copies re- 
quired increased four-fold/' Said an educated native 



THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITERATURES. 183 

to one of the colporteurs: (i Those men have come into 
our beautiful country ; they build chapels, and the 
sound of their bells is heard far and near. The 
alarming sound enters even into our ancestral halls, 
and our family graves. Even our incense loses its 
power; our sons and our daughters will die, and the 
foreigner and his faith will triumph/' 

Very striking is the scene depicted on one of the 
islands of the South Pacific, when a case of Bibles in 
the Earatongan tongue was opened and distributed 
among the natives. A venerable man among them 
told how he could not sleep till he had read the entire 
Book of Job, which had never before been seen in a 
Earatongan dress. Then "lifting up the sacred vol- 
ume before the entire congregation ," he exclaimed: 
"This is my resolve : the dust shall never cover my 
Bible; the moths shall never eat it; the mildew shall 
never rot it." 

Yes, there can be no doubt that this library of Ori- 
ental books, which we call the Bible, has a strange 
adaptability for version into the multiform varieties 
of human speech, and a strange power to seize the 
attention and win the affection of the countless tribes 
of the human race. It is speaking to-day of Christ and 
His salvation to peoples too numerous to tell. In 
Equatorial and Southern Africa; in India and China; 
in Japan and Korea; in Persia, Arabia, and Armenia; 
from the Island of Ceylon to the gates of Afghanistan, 
and far away beyond the boundaries of British India, 
to the tribes of Central Asia^ in the Polynesian and 
Malayan Archipelagoes; in New Guinea and Australia, 
and northward in our own continent to the Arctic 



184 THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITERATURES. 

circle, "the sacred torch is being simultaneously 
handed on." To say that there is no parallel to this 
in the history of the literatures of the world is entirely 
superfluous. 

A final feature which marks out the literature of the 
Bible from all other literatures is that the interest 
which it awakens and the study which it calls forth in- 
crease with the advancing centuries. For eighteen 
centuries the prof oundest scholars and the keenest 
witted men have been exploring the mines hid within 
this little book — yet its wealth is not exhausted. On 
the contrary, the nineteenth century has brought to 
the study of the Scriptures a wealth of learning and 
a laborious scholarship never equaled in any preceding 
age. In no age of the world, it may safely be affirmed, 
have the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament 
been searched so laboriously, so minutely, with such 
painstaking research, with such keen analysis, with 
such varied critical appliances, or by so great an array 
of accomplished scholars, as in this age in which we 
live. 

The annals of contemporary history, where any ex- 
isted, have been ransacked to illuminate the story of the 
Bible. The resources of philology have been exhausted 
to elucidate the language of the Bible. The researches 
of archaeology have been diligently and laboriously pur- 
sued to illustrate the geography and the topography, 
and, we might say, the sociology of the Bible, while 
Oriental literatures and languages have been laid under 
tribute as never before to aid in its interpretation. Two 
branches of Biblical science have been so developed and 
enlarged, as almost to be justly entitled to rank as new 



TEE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITERATURES. 185 

sciences in this century — the textual criticism 
and the higher or historical criticism. Devout schol- 
ars have consecrated the larger part of their lives to the 
study of the various MSS. in order to ascertain the cor- 
rect text. That same patient investigation which phys- 
ical scientists have given to the facts and processes of 
nature has been exhibited in the field of Biblical research 
by a great company of scholars in the study of the 
structure of the Bible and the relation of its several 
parts to one another. 

But, some one may rejoin, this keen analysis to 
which scientific students are subjecting the books of 
the Bible is undermining its authority. A process of 
criticism is at this very hour going on that bids fair to 
overturn the traditional ideas of its origin and of the 
authorship of its books, in fact, of its whole structure. 

The spectre of the Higher Criticism rises, like Ban- 
quo's ghost at the feast, to destroy our peace of mind, 
to weaken the impression which the considerations we 
have adduced must make upon every reflecting mind, of 
the altogether unique character of this book, which is 
the treasure and the hope and the beacon light of the 
Christian Church. What have we to say of the higher 
criticism? 

Let us remember in the first place, that the Bible 
has never yet suffered any damage, in the long run, 
from free investigation. It has ever emerged from the 
fire of criticism, as the Hebrew children did from the 
furnace of Nebuchadnezzar, scatheless. Nevertheless, 
erroneous conceptions about the Bible have from time 
to time been sloughed off by the Church, as the result 
of the fiery trial of criticism. We may safely rest in 



186 THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG L1TEBATUBES. 

the confidence that the present agitation will have a 
like result. It is quite superfluous for us to tremble 
for the Word of God. It will stand firm as the lasting 
hills— but it is very possible some of our notions re- 
specting its structure will have to be materially modified. 
In the next place, truth and justice demand that we 
discriminate carefully between two distinct schools 
among the critics. 

If there are those who use criticism recklessly, who 
discredit the historical credibility of the Bible, and re- 
ject its claims as a record of God's revelation of Himself 
to man, there are also those, and they are among the 
most learned and distinguished critics of the day, who 
are cautious and careful in their methods, deeply rev- 
erential in spirit, profoundly convinced of the divine 
origin and authority of the Bible, and firm and clear in 
their Christian faith, as they are devout and exemplary 
in their lives. We should be very cautious how we 
condemn as enemies of the faith men who, by every 
test, are the true servants of Christ, because they hold 
not with us as to the date and authorship and structure 
of some of the books of the Bible, although they rever- 
ence it as devoutly as ourselves, and bow to its divine 
authority as unquestionably as we. It is possible these 
views may be erroneous in many particulars, but it is 
also possible that our own opinions may be at fault. 
Time and patience will judge between us. It is not 
for us to usurp the function of the Judge. Gamaliel's 
counsel may be salutary in this case : "Kef rain from 
these men, and let them alone ; for if this counsel and 
this work be of men, it will come to nought ; but if it 
be of God, you cannot overthrow it ; lest haply ye be 
found even to fight against God." 



THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITERATURES. 187 

It is our decided conviction, then, that the alarm 
which the higher critcism has occasioned in the minds 
of many is unnecessary, and may safely be dismissed, 
especially as the labors of devout critics are making it 
plainer every day that the destructive criticism of the 
school of Kuenen and Wellhausen cannot maintain it- 
self. We may recall the fact that a similar anxiety 
and disquietude of mind have again and again been felt 
by good men in the face of the discoveries of science, 
or the advance of scholarship, lest these should over- 
throw the faith of men ; but experience has shown that 
such was not the case ; and, while mere traditional 
opinions have perished in the flame which knowledge 
has kindled, the Bible has only been the more clearly 
understood and the faith the more firmly established. 

We may be confident that the same result will follow 
in the present case. We may well renew our faith in the 
presence and guidance of God's Holy Spirit with His 
Church. He will lead us all into truth. He will guide 
the researches of devout scholars so that they will lead 
to a clearer light and a larger apprehension of the revela- 
tion which the Scriptures contain. Already we are great 
gainers by much that the higher criticism has accom- 
plished, and as its work is tested by time, and purified 
in the alembic of a yet riper and more reverent scholar- 
ship, the Church will be more and more its debtor. 
Meanwhile, let us never forget that " where the Spirit 
of the Lord is, there is liberty," and that it would be 
worse than fatuous to attempt to fetter the investiga- 
tions of Christian scholarship ; it would be an act of un- 
belief, it would be rebellion against the Master's own 
precept: "Search the Scriptures. " Truth is afire 



188 THE BIBLE UNIQUE AMONG LITERATURES. 

which will consume the wood and the hay and the 
stubble, both of the critics and the theologians, but 
the gold and silver and precious stones, the eternal 
verities of God's revelation, will come out of the fur- 
nace unharmed, not even the smell of fire upon them, 
brighter and more resplendent than ever. 



VIII. 

CHRIST'S RESURRECTION AND 

ASCENSION AS TYPES OF 

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 



" To preach the fact of the Resurrection was the first 
function of the evangelists ; to embody the doctrine of the 
Resurrection is the great office of the church ; to learn the 
meaning of the Resurrection is the task not of our age 
only, but of all"— Westcott. 

" The natural and the spiritual miracles of the sacred 
narrative are only the notes of a higher harmony which 
resound throughout the discord of earthly history." — 
Beyschlag. 

* ' All naturalistic attempts to explain away the Resur- 
rection, up to this date, have turned out failures. The 
physical Resurrection remains" — Alex. Balmain 
Bruce. 



VIII. 

CHRIST'S RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION AS TYPES OF 
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 

The Christian Church, it has been well said, is 
built upon an empty sepulchre, since the Eesurrection 
of Christ is the foundation of the Christian system, 
the bed-rock of Christian faith. It was distinctly the 
apostolic teaching, as it has been that of the Holy 
Catholic church, unwaveringly through all the Chris- 
tian ages, that upon the certainty and objective reality 
of the Eesurrection of Christ depend the forgiveness of 
our sins, the peace of our conscience, the hope of our 
immortality — everything indeed which makes Chris- 
tianity valuable to mankind. 

It is not always as clearly perceived (notwithstanding 
the teaching of the creeds of the church) that the As- 
cension of Christ is indissolubly linked by the inspired 
writers with the Eesurrection, that it is put forward by 
them as one of the great cardinal events of the Chris- 
tian Evangel, and that it, too, has a very profound sig- 
nificance, not only in relation to the Christian Eevela- 
tion, but also in relation to human development. 

It is the purpose of this essay to combine these 
two fundamental evangelic facts in one study, with 
particular reference to the light they shed upon the 
future destiny of man. The disadvantage arising from 



192 CHBIST'S RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION 

the brief and incomplete treatment made necessary by- 
presenting two such subjects, as it were, on one canvas, 
will, it is hoped, be compensated by the more comprehen- 
sive view thus obtained of revealed truth, and by the op- 
portunity of considering the Kesurrection and the As- 
cension in their mutual relations, — the* one being in 
fact the necessary sequel to the other, and each of 
them having a highly important bearing upon the de- 
velopment of the human race. 

THE RESURRECTION. 

The Eesurrection of Christ, as already intimated, 
touches Christian truth at many points. We shall here 
consider it in its bearing upon one article only of our 
Faith — the Eesurrection of the body. The resurrec- 
tion of the body is part of our faith. It is one of the 
articles of that creed which is required of every man 
who would be baptized: " I believe in the resurrection 
of the body." In what sense do we accept this article 
of our belief? As soon as we try to think clearly con- 
cerning this matter the old question rises up to con- 
front us, "How are the dead raised up? and with 
what body do they come ? " 

Now, first of all, let it be answered that, though the 
difficulty of conceiving the mode of the resurrection 
should be insurmountable, though we should be quite 
unable to offer even the faintest attempt at a solution 
of the problem "With what body do they come ?" 
the fact of the resurrection is not thereby shaken, nor 
the reasonableness of our faith therein in the slightest 
degree impaired. Once convinced (as we are upon the 
surest grounds) that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, 



AS TYPES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 193 

we hold it supremely reasonable to believe all the facts 
and all the truths he has revealed. But one of these 
is the resurrection of the body. Christ has said it ; 
there is an end of the question for us who believe Him 
to be the truth. 

But he has given us more than his word. He Him- 
self rose from the dead. His dead body was raised 
from the sepulchre. The evidence of this stupendous 
fact is overwhelming. It is no exaggeration to say, 
with a recent careful and able writer: "To any one 
who considers the matter dispassionately, the resur- 
rection of Christ will appear to rest on evidence as ir- 
refragable as the assassination of Julius Cassar/" * If 
any man say that the resurrection of the body is im- 
possible or inconceivable, we answer, It has taken place. 
Jesus Christ rose from the dead. His resurrection is 
one of the facts that science and reason must reckon 
with. A priori objections count for nothing when 
confronted by the actual occurrence of the event whose 
impossibility they are supposed to demonstrate. 

We have referred to the objection of the Corinthian 
skeptic : "How are the dead raised up V He was a 
Christian, be it observed; but, staggered by the doctrine 
of the resurrection of the body, he had put a gloss upon 
the apostolic teaching, and took it to affirm merely the 
resurrection of the spirit. This view, however, the 
Apostle Paul emphatically repudiates, and affirms a 
resurrection of the body distinct from the resurrection 
of the spirit. To the incredulous question, "With 
what body do they come?" he answers: "Foolish 



* Canon MacColl. 



194 CHRIST'S RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION 

man, you say the resurrection of the body is inconceiv- 
able, and yet you know that every seed that is sown in 
the earth must die before it can spring up as a stalk of 
grain. You know, also, that though there is a true 
identity between the seed and the stalk, or the bulb and 
the flower, yet there is a vast difference. Thou sowest 
not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may be of 
wheat, or of some other grain, but God giveth it a body 
as it hath pleased Him." 

Let us not mistake him. The Apostle does not offer 
this as a, proof of the resurrection, but as an analogy. 
He alleges facts and processes equally inexplicable, 
equally inconceivable, yet accepted by all without 
question. The analogy to which he appeals holds to- 
day with undiminished force. No science can answer, 
"How is the seed raised up ? How does an unsightly 
bulb produce a beautiful hyacinth V 3 It may be said 
that in advance of experience it would have been as 
difficult to believe that the lily should spring from its 
root as that the body of man should be raised from 
the dead in incorruption and glory. 

We can imagine that there might be a world where 
the trees and the flowers would never decay, never die, 
and where the processes of germination and growth 
and ripening, familiar to us, would be unknown. 
Now, if a denizen of this earth should be transported 
to such a world, and should carry with him a handful 
of seeds, and should tell the inhabitants of that other 
world that in our earth these little seeds, when sown 
in the ground, die, and that out of that dissolution 
come waving fields of grain, loftly forests, and the 
most delicate and beautiful of flowers, can we not im- 



AS TYPES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 195 

agine the incredulity with which the statement might 
be received ? Would not the skeptics there demand, 
with the same supercilious scorn, "How are the dead 
seeds raised up? and with what body do they come ?" 
Let us take an illustration from the phenomena of 
embrology. "Each one of us as individuals," says a 
distinguished scientist, "was formed gradually by a 
process .of evolution from a microscopic spherule of 
protoplasm, undistinguishable from the lowest forms of 
protozoal life." It is, we believe, a common place in 
biology that all the physical tests known to science fail 
to detect any difference between the bioplasm of the 
different classes of living beings. Structureless, color- 
less bioplasm is all that the microscope reveals in the 
egg when the process of quickening begins. Now, 
suppose we who are laymen to science, demand, "How 
can it be possible that out of the same protoplasm 
comes a lion, or an eagle, or a swallow, indifferently ? 
How can it be that a sparrow and a Shakespeare can be 
evolved out of one and the same material?" Could 
science give us an answer ? Could a Huxley or a 
Darwin conceive the process by which such a marvel- 
ous transformation takes place ? They can see by aid 
of the microscope these tiny weavers, the bioplasts, at 
work weaving their threads; but can they explain how 
it is done ? We are here in the presence of fathomless 
mysteries — mysteries as profound as that declared by 
the Apostle when he said of the human body: "It is 
sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption." Paul 
was right; it is the part of a foolish person to object to 
the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body 
that we cannot understand it, or that we cannot con- 



196 CHRIST'S RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION 

ceive by what process it can take place, God, who 
gives to each seed its own body, can out of the dead 
natural body raise up the spiritual body (no longer a 
body of flesh and blood), clothed in immortality and 
gemmed with glory. 

There is an obvious, and apparently forcible, reply to 
this argument, viz., this : It is not merely that the 
process of resurrection is inconceivable, but that it con- 
tradicts the facts of observation and experience. We 
know that the body returns to earth. " Dust thou art, 
and unto dust thou shalt return," is the decree of God 
himself ; and we know that the bodies that are laid in 
the grave are dissolved into their component elements, 
" which are scattered to the four winds and become 
portions of other beings — beasts, fishes, birds, and plants 
— and are destined again to return to corruption in 
never ending succession." 

How then can we believe in the resurrection of the 
body? How can the same body rise again, when it has 
been thus dissolved, and its elements returned to the 
general stock of matter, and thence again redistributed 
over and over again among various different organisms? 

Our answer to this objection is that it is founded 
upon a materialistic and unscriptural conception of the 
resurrection. The early fathers, in their just zeal to 
assert the personality of man and of God against Panthe- 
ism and the divine origin and sacredness of the body 
against Ghosticism, went beyond the revealed doctrine 
and asserted the resurrection of the flesh. Origen op- 
posed this notion and called it " the foolishness of 
beggarly minds." 

He was thus far right. Jesus and his Apostles did 



AS TYPES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 197 

not teach the resurrection of the flesh. The Bible does 
not conflict with science here. On the contrary, the 
great Apostle distinctly affirms: " Now this I say, breth- 
ren, flesh and Hood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; 
neither doth corruption inherit incorruption" 

We believe, then, in the resurrection of the body, 
but we have no reason to believe that one single parti- 
cle of the body that is laid in the tomb will be raised 
from it in the resurrection. How then can we assert 
the identity of the present body and the resurrection 
body? The answer is not far to seek; identity does 
not depend upon an identity of particles, or of sub- 
stance. Our bodies are not the same any two hours 
together. They are in a continual state of flux. Our 
men of science tell us that there is not one particle of 
the same matter in our bodies to-day that there was ten 
years ago: 

" The form only is identical, not the flesh. Lotze's 
apt comparison of the body to a ripple around some 
hidden stone in a stream is physiologically true. We 
see day after day the same ripple in the stream, the 
same wave-form, produced by the same cause, but the 
drops of water are always changing; matter is in a per- 
petual flux; the stream of existence is ever flowing by; 
our bodies are but momentary forms, never the same 
two successive seasons, and destined soon to pass 
away." * 

And yet our identity is preserved. We are the same 
men, and in a sense our bodies are the same. If, then, 
this bodily identity is not dependent even in this life 

* Newman Smyth. 



198 CHRIST'S RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION 

upon an identity of constituent particles, or of sub- 
stance, it is plain that the resurrection body may be, in 
a real sense, the same as this natural body, although 
not a single atom that now constitutes the latter shall 
be present in the former. 

Let us here note two distinct features of the Chris- 
tian doctrine of the resurrection of the body : 

1. Although the flesh shall not rise and the compo- 
nent elements of this mortal body shall be dissolved to 
dust, not to be reincorporated, nevertheless there is a 
vital, an organic connection between this body of our 
humiliation and the body of glory and immortality. 
The body that now is will be changed — it will not be 
destroyed; it will be transfigured — it will not be annihi- 
lated. The Apostle says, " It is raised" Yes, sown it 
is in corruption, but raised in incorruption — not another, 
but "it" " This mortal must put on immortality." 
That structure of beauty and glory — indestructable, 
eternal, the spiritual body — will be built upon the basis 
of this present tabernacle, wherein we dwell here in the 
wilderness. God made these earthly bodies. As His 
handiwork, they are not only wonderful, but they are 
sacred; they are the temples of the Holy Ghost, and 
Christ has redeemed them. He is the Saviour of the body. 
He embraced in his saving purpose, the whole man — 
body, soul, and spirit. And so as Christians we believe 
that the great Creator will conserve these bodies, not- 
withstanding their complete and glorious transformation 
at the resurrection. The natural body is organically con- 
nected with the spiritual body; yes, to such a degree 
that there is a continuity and identity between them. 
Christ's resurrection is here our beacon light. He was 



AS TYP^S OP HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 199 

the same Jesus. Changed as he was, yet he was recog- 
nized as the same gracious Master who had been cruci- 
fied for them. That identity of the risen Christ with 
the crucified Christ is a precious fact. It makes us 
sure that in the resurrection-body there will be that 
personal identity we long for; and that mutual recog- 
nition in the life that is to come, which our sorrowing 
hearts so earnestly crave. 

2. But, on the other hand, the resurrection-body will 
be fashioned different to this. It will not be a body 
of flesh and blood like this one, for flesh and blood can- 
not inherit the kingdom of God. It will be a spiritual 
body ; not a corruptible, material organization like 
this one ; but incorruptible, indestructible, immortal — 
more different from the other than the sparkling dia- 
mond differs from the dull bit of black charcoal ; or 
the winged ethereal insect that sips the nectar of the 
flowers and basks in the sunshine, from the grub that 
crawls in the dirt. What a transfiguration ! "It is 
sown in corruption ; it is raised in incorruption. It is 
sown in dishonor ; it is raised in glory ! It is sown in 
weakness ; it is raised in power ! It is sown a natural 
body; it is* raised a spiritual body!" Moreover, this 
magnificent transformation is in the line of the natural 
development which the great Creator has established in 
Christ. " There is a natural lody" says the Apostle, 
"and there is a spiritual lody. Howleit, that was not 
first which was S2nritual 9 hut that which was natural, and 
afterward that which was spiritual." This spiritual 
body is the crown and consummation of the wondrous 
process of development. It is developed out of the 
natural body. Perhaps there is in the natural body the 



200 CHRIST'S RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION 

germ out of which the spiritual body is to be unfolded. 
We cannot admit the Swedenborgian notion that the 
spiritual body already exists, and is set free by death 
from the bonds of the flesh — escaping as a bird out of a 
cage. It is contrary to Scripture and to the analogy of 
science. But we think it possible that the rudiments 
of the spiritual body exist in the natural body ; that 
the former may lie in embryo within the latter. We 
cannot indeed define the nature of the spiritual body. 
We cannot explain its relation to the mortal body. 
But neither can we explain the nexus between mind 
and matter ; between the material brain cells and the 
immaterial thinking principle. It may be that the 
spiritual, body will be formed of some etherealized and 
sublimated matter, from which the elements of decay 
and corruption have been eliminated. Physical science 
already admits the existence of an ethereal matter 
quite different from ordinary matter. There may be a 
yet more highly sublimated matter which shall be the 
material of the spiritual body. With this the soul may 
be clothed in glory and beauty as far exceeding any 
earthly body as the Easter lilies excel the bulbs from 
which they sprang ; and it is just as conceivable that 
such a body may be the tabernacle of the human spirit 
as that the brain should now be (as it is) the physical 
basis of the mind. We cannot dogmatize here. We 
have no wish to do so. But we may venture to think 
that the resurrection of Christ is, in its main outlines, 
the pattern of His people's, since He is " the first- 
fruits of them that slept." 

Now we observe a marvelous change in the embodi- 
ment of Christ after His resurrection. His body was 



AS TYPES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 201 

not subject to the same laws as before. On the other 
hand, it possessed new powers and new characteristics. 
He was recognizable, but only after careful observation. 
He lived in a new sphere. He no longer dwelt with his 
disciples, but only appeared to them on certain occa- 
sions. During those forty days his body was appa- 
rently in a progressive process of glorification ; at first 
linked on to the natural life at certain points, but 
gradually released from these bonds till at length, 
when completely spiritualized, it could no longer lin- 
ger on earth but rose into the heavens. So perhaps it 
will be with us. After death our spirits shall go into 
Paradise as did the spirit of Jesus. There we shall 
wait in happy expectancy — in peace and rest and joy, 
until the great day of the general resurrection, when 
we shall be again clothed, but with the spiritual body, 
which shall be fashioned like unto His own body of 
glory. 

THE ASCEKSIOtf. 

The Ascension is the natural sequence of the Resur- 
rection, and it possesses peculiar importance as the 
link between the earthly and the heavenly life of our 
Lord, being at once the last term of the one and the 
first term of the other. 

If we study it attentively we shall find that it sus- 
tains a similar relation, and contains a similar signifi- 
cance, with reference to the earthly and heavenly life 
of the race of man. For us too it is the link between 
the visible and the invisible, between the natural and 
the spiritual, between earth and heaven. It performs 
a kind of mediatorial function between the sensuous 



202 CUBIST'S BESUBBECTION AND ASCENSION 

life which men live on the shore of time and the sup- 
ersensuous life that awaits them on the other side. 

If we compare the Ascension with the Incarnation 
we may say that as by the latter God was manifest in 
the flesh, and Heaven, as it were, brought down to earth, 
so by the former man's higher destiny is revealed, and 
earth lifted up to Heaven. 

If we consider the relation of the Ascension to the 
whole series of great evangelic facts, we may say that it 
isas the spire to the cathedral. It completes the great 
structure of Eedemptive Eevelation. Foundation, 
porch, nave, aisles, choir, sanctuary, roof, — these all 
must be crowned by the spire which points, and seems 
to lead to Heaven. Such is the Ascension considered 
in relation to the Birth, the Baptism, the Life, the 
Miracles, the Teaching, the Passion, the Death and 
the Eesurrection of Jesus. It crowns and completes the 
whole. 

But, as we have said, the Ascension has a distinct 
significance in relation to the destiny and development 
of man. Here too we may compare it to a church 
spire, which rising pure and white above the smoke 
and din and turmoil of a busy city — leaving its grime 
and dirt, its squalor and its wretchedness, far below, 
stands out distinct and clear against the unpolluted 
sky, and points to a cloudless heaven. How beautiful 
and how suggestive is such a sight, — and it is not un- 
common among the manufacturing towns of England, 
— the murky, gloomy, sooty cloud enveloping the 
homes and the workshops of the artisans, almost con- 
cealing them from view, as one looks down upon the 
town from a neighboring hill; and then the cross-sur- 



AS TYPES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 203 

mounted spire rising from the midst of those cheerless 
homes, and piercing the heavy murky mass, till it 
emerges in the sunlight above! 

Such is the Ascension of Christ. Above the dark 
cloud of death and decay that hangs over our human life 
here on earth, it rises a harbinger and beacon of a life 
where there is neither death nor corruption. It leads 
our thoughts up to a purer air, — unpolluted with the 
microbes of decay. It reveals a higher destiny for 
the sons of men. It lifts us from the natural into the 
spiritual. 

With the disciples we stand on the hill of Olivet, 
and we see Jesus, — a man, the Son of Man, our Friend 
and our Brother (as well as our Saviour) — Him whom 
the Apostle calls the Second Adam, — rising from 
earth, and ascending up through the opening skies 
into heaven itself ! It is a revelation of the glorious 
destiny that waits the children of God. It is the con- 
tradiction of the philosophy of despair, that sometimes 
envelopes man as a thick cloud. It is the demonstra- 
tion, not by argument, but by an actual example, of 
the certainty of immortality. It is the swinging open 
of the gate of eternal life through which we catch a 
glimpse of the glory that is to be revealed when this 
corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this 
mortal immortality. 

On this spot, and with that wondrous spectacle in 
view the words of the Apostle take a new significance : 
" If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual 
body. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual but 
that which is natural ; then that which is spiritual. 
The first man is of the earth, earthy ; the second man 



204 CHRIST'S RESUBBECTION AND ASCENSION 

is of heaven * * * And as we have borne the image of 
the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly/' 

The ascending Christ is clothed in a spiritual body, 
— His natural body has during those forty days been 
changed and transfigured into the body of glory. The 
body of His humiliation — His natural body — was first ; 
then, afterward, the spiritual body, which cannot but 
ascend up far above all heavens, since it is no longer 
earthy, but spiritual. Into that spiritual sphere He 
passes — leaving us the assurance that, if we become 
vitally connected with Him, so that His life touches 
and transforms ours, we, too, shall be clothed with the 
spiritual body : " as we have borne the image of the 
earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." 

Two things we would here emphasize : 

First, the existence of an unseen universe. Secondly, 
its relation to the visible order in which we now live 
and have our being. 

I. This Ascension scene, as it were, opens the doors 
of the Invisible to mortal gaze. The Christ enters 
them and is lost to view. " A cloud received Him out 
of their sight." But the cloud is the limitation of our 
mortal vision. The unseen universe is not far away in 
some distant heavens. It is close at hand. It is about 
our path and about our bed. Only our feeble faculties 
hide it from our sight. When they are quickened, as 
in rare instances they have been, it stands revealed. 
The young man who served Elisha was able, when God 
opened his eyes, to see the mountain full of chariots 
and horses of fire, encompassing the prophet for his 
defense. The dying martyr, St. Stephen, beheld the 
heavens opened and his Master, Christ, standing on 



AS TYPES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 205 

the right hand of God. The eleven apostles, as they 
stood gazing up into heaven after their ascended 
Lord, beheld two angels in white apparel, who gave 
them assurance that this same Jesus would so come 
in like manner as they had seen Him go into heaven. 

Christian history is full of records of like glimpses 
into the unseen granted to saints and martyrs in mo- 
ments of high spiritual experiences, or in the ap- 
proach of dissolution. 

We must bear this thought in mind in our concep- 
tion of the ascension. The world of spirit, into which 
He entered, is above the natural world of sense and 
mortal sight, " not in space but in altitude of being. " 
The unseen universe is all around us, close to us, in- 
terpenetrating, perhaps, the visible universe. 

This need not surprise us. It is according to the 
analogy of nature. Is not this visible world the ex- 
pression and manifestation of invisible forces, by which 
it is fashioned, from which it proceeds, by which it is 
upheld ? Is not the vital force by which all living or- 
ganisms are built up invisible ? Is not the light which 
itself reveals all things, itself an invisible, impalpable 
substance ? Who ever saw the waves of the luminous 
ether as they come rippling through illimitable space 
from some far- distant star or sun ? Who ever detected 
to human vision the waves of sound, which bear sweet 
harmonies to the ear ? Or what microscopist has ever 
been able to make palpable to sense the electric fluid 
when it slumbers within the wire ? The thunder, the 
lightning, the electric light, are all manifestations to 
the senses of invisible forces, which encompass us un- 
seen on every hand. And how unspeakably more* per- 



206 CHRIST'S RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION 

manent and real are these unseen forces than the 
transitory, unstable, perishable phenomena in which 
they are embodied to the senses ! Chemical force, 
vital force, electric force, light force abide, while the 
visible things which embody them to the eye, vegetable 
and animal organisms, fire, lightflashes, pass away. In 
this sphere of nature also the canon holds good, " The 
things which are seen are temporary ; the things which 
are not seen are enduring." Nor does the analogy 
stop here. Science tells us that there are waves of light 
which move too rapidly to make any impression on the 
optic nerve, so that we may be surrounded by forms 
and colors which, though very near to us, are yet in- 
visible. A very high authority in the realm of scien- 
tific knowledge declares that " myriads of organized 
beings may exist imperceptible to our vision even if we 
were among them." * 

Is it then unreasonable to believe, as this ascension 
scene suggests, that the unseen universe is around us 
and near to us, though our senses perceive it not ? 

II. But there is another thought suggested by the 
Ascension — the relation of the unseen universe and the 
spiritual destiny of man to the visible order in which 
we are now placed. It is a relation, first of all, of con- 
tinuity. There was no violent break between the risen 
life and the ascended life of the Lord Jesus. The 
Ascension was the natural sequence of the Kesurrec- 
tion. He was not snatched away by a whirlwind, or 
by a chariot of fire and horses of fire. He ascended in- 
to heaven, because his body was fitted for the spiritual 
sphere. It was now become the body of his glory, and 

* MacColl, " Christianity in Eelation to Science,' ' p. 225. 



AS TYPES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 207 

it could only be at home iu the state of glory. The 
supersensuous environment was now its natural environ- 
ment ; as the air, not the sea, is the natural home of 
the bird ; as the butterfly, released from its chrysalis 
prison, naturally soars aloft into the sunshine, and 
sips the nectar of the flowers. Thus the Ascension of 
Christ makes it plain that there is a continuity be- 
tween the life that now is and the life that is to be — 
that life in the Unseen is linked on to the life here on 
the shore of time. It will still be true on the other 
side, that 

" What we have been makes us what we are." 
The resurrection body and the resurrection life have 
a germinal connection with the body and the life that 
now are. 

The one grows out of the other by natural law. 
" Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap " is 
the law of God's working; and it holds in the next life 
as well as in this. That indeed will be the harvesting 
of the seed sown here. Herein lies the momentous 
solemnity of this fleeting life, that it is the seed time 
of the eternal harvest. 

But there is more than this relation of conduct here 
to environment hereafter — more also than this fact of 
continuity between the two spheres, the seen and the 
unseen, the natural and the spiritual. The words of 
St. Paul are very instructive in this connection: "If 
there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual 
body. * * * # Howbeit that is not first which is spirit- 
ual, but that which is natural; then that which is 
spiritual."" In other words this spiritual body and 
this spiritual destiny take their place in the march of 



208 CUBIST'S RESUR11ECTION AND ASCENSION 

orderly development which we see on every hand in 
the works of God. What is the order which Infinite 
Wisdom has established as the constitution of His uni- 
verse? It is the order of development from the lower 
forms to the higher, from the inorganic to the organic, 
from the ruder to the more perfect organisms. Whether 
we study the growth of the worlds, or the growth of 
animal or vegetable forms, the story is the same— the 
upward progress of each, through long stages of develop- 
ment, from beauty to beauty, from glory to glory, to- 
ward a goal of perfection. Ever the same law prevails: 
there is an evolution from grosser to more refined forms: 
from ruder to more complex organisms. 

Now the apostle's language places the natural and the 
spiritual body under the same law of evolution: " that 
was not first which was spiritual, but that which was 
natural : then that which was spiritual." The Ascen- 
sion is the supreme example of this law. The body of 
the Lord Jesus which ascends is a spiritual body, it is 
the body of his glory ; but it grew out of his natural 
body. In an important sense it was the same. Yet 
again it was not the same. It was spiritualized. It 
was glorified. Its corruptible elements were all elimi- 
nated. The corruptible had, in God's own inscrutable 
way, put on incorruption; the mortal had put on im- 
mortality. 

Thus the scene on Olivet is the fulfillment of the 
promise given in that other wondrous scene on Mt. 
Hermon. The Transfiguration was the foreshadowing 
of the Ascension. Jesus was now transfigured, not for a 
few moments, but forever. But this Transfiguration is 
effected in each case in accordance with the laws of 



AS TYPES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 209 

God's universe. It takes its place in the upward 
march of the creation. 

The process is indeed inconceivable to us, — but then 
all the marvelous processes of Nature are inconceiva- 
ble. We know what marvels are wrought by chemical 
force, by vital force, by electric force, but we know 
absolutely nothing about the processes by which they 
are effected. We know some of the transfigurations that 
take place in the realm of chemistry for example, or of 
biology, but we know not a syllable about the processes 
involved. Science is a firmament studded thick with 
mysteries. Biology is as full of marvels unexplained 
and incomprehensible as theology. The transfigura- 
tion of one force into another is as great a mystery as 
the transformation of the natural body into the spirit- 
ual body. 

The " Ascent of force " which the scientist tells us 
of is as incomprehensible as the Ascension of Christ. 
There are facts in the natural world which are familiar 
to the school-boy and to the plowman to-day, and ex- 
cite no surprise, which would have been deemed in- 
credible and impossible fifty years ago. The marvels 
of the telephone and the phonograph are the common 
property of the educated and the uneducated, but no 
one can explain how it is that a whisper can be heard 
at the distance of a thousand miles, or that the utter- 
ances of a human voice can be caught and stored up 
on plates of metal, and made articulate again at plea- 
sure long years after. 

In conclusion we reiterate the statement that the 
spiritual body and the spiritual destiny that are pre- 
figured for man in the Eesurrection and the Ascension 



210 CHRIST'S RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION 

of Christ stand in close relation to the body that now is 
and to the life that now is. There is continuity and 
there is sequence. The supernatural is not the anti- 
natural. In a large sense, all that is, is natural, — to 
God, and perhaps to the angels, there is no super- 
natural, because all things, whether in the world of 
sense or of spirit, are under law. The visible is the 
embodiment, is the garment, of the invisible. And 
again it is the path which leads up to the invisible. 
If we rightly read the lesson of these two great events, 
we will on the one hand be impressed with the grand- 
eur of the destiny that opens up to man, as an heir of 
God and a joint heir of Christ, a destiny spiritual and 
divine, magnificent and glorious beyond the power of 
the human mi-nd to conceive; but on the other hand we 
shall perceive that this world and this life are full of a 
divine significance, as the seedplot of immortality and 
glory — as the training-school for the higher life. True 
it is that this visible frame and order are only transitory 
and perishable. All must pass away. 

" The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Tea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind.' ' 

But not till it has done its work, — not till it has ful- 
filled its God-appointed function, as the needful scaf- 
folding for the immaterial temple, for the spiritual 
life. 

To despise the body — to despise this material world 
and its revelations and obligations — is to be guilty of 
profanity — it is to impugn the divine wisdom. The 



AS TYPES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 211 

Christian will use this world as not abusing it. He will 
not be its slave. He will not make it his idol. He will 
not forget that the fashion of this world passeth away. 
He will always remember that here he has no contin- 
uing city. But he will at the same time reverence this 
present body and this present life, as the handiwork 
of God, and as the divinely appointed field on which he 
is to cultivate character and to prepare for his higher 
destiny. 

Meanwhile from the open heavens comes to the ear of 
faith the voice of the great High Priest at the right 
hand of the Majesty on high, saying, " Father I will 
that they whom thou hast given me be with me when 
I am, that they may behold My glory! " 



*Note. The expressions used on pp. 204, 206, and 208,—" the 
body of our humiliation," and " the body of His glory," — 
are taken from St. Paul, Phil. iii. 21, where the A. V. has 
given a very misleading rendering. The words the Apostle 
uses are, to ogj/llo. ryg TaTretvucreug, and to ao/ia Trjq do^qq avTov 

The view of the resurrection-body of our Lord, advocated 
in this essay, is thus strikingly stated by Dr. Bruce : "In 
the resurrection of Jesus, two processes seem to have been 
combined into one : the revivication of the crucified body, 
and its transformation into a spiritual body endowed with 
an eternal form of existence ; 'the first process being merely a 
means to an end, the actual, if not the indispensable, condition 
of the second." —Apologetics, p. 398. 



IX. 

THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT 
DOCTRINE. 

With. Special Reference to the Teaching of Ritschl. 



" To the burning question, Who or what is the seat of 
ultimate authority in religion f the most recent apolo- 
getic answers, Christ : Christ, not other religious masters, 
not the individual reason, not the Church, not even the 
Bible"— Alex. Balmain Bruce. 

11 The Gospel which they [Ritschl and his school] draw 
from these Scriptures is an expurgated Gospel— a Gos- 
pel divested, in deference to the modern spirit, of its su- 
pernatural accompaniments, and transformed into a 
pattern fashioned according to their own presupposi- 
tions. . . . Those elements of the primitive Faith which do 
not harmonize with the postulates of the system, or are 
thought unsuitable to modern requirements, are put 
aside as of no permanent importance. The apostolic 
teaching on the Person of Christ, for instance — on His 
pre-existence, His divine nature, His future advent — is in 
this way dismissed as unessential .... the Pauline views 
on the law, sin, death, etc., are criticised, modified, or 
rejected, at pleasure. . . . The Christianty it offers to our 
age may, in its judgment, be an improvement on the old, 
but it is assuredly not the Christianity of the primitive 
Church, or of its Scriptural monuments." — James Orr. 



IX. 

THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE.* 

The most significant and important movement of 
thought in the theology of this generation is that which 
has for its motto, " Back to Christ "—to His words, to 
His teaching, to His Person, as the pure Castalian 
spring of Christian truth and doctrine. It is a move- 
ment of reaction from the scholasticism of post-Refor- 
mation theology — a profoundly earnest effort to escape 
from the meshes of artificial theological systems by a 
direct return to Christ. Now it cannot be questioned 
that theology has been on the whole both quickened and 
purified by this effort to revert to the original type, and 
in doing so to cast off the degenerate forms which had 
been grafted upon it in the name of development. 
But, on the other hand, the reaction has gone too far; 
and not a few of the Christian thinkers of our time, 
in seeking to go back to Christ, have in reality gone 
back behind Christ, and do actually repudiate His 
teaching, while claiming to make it the one touch- 
stone of faith and doctrine. Meanwhile they thrust 
the Living Christ entirely into the background. The 

most conspicuous example of this extreme is that re- 

i • 

*I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness in the preparation 
of this Essay to the Rev. Dr. Jas. Denny's " Studies in Theol- 
ogy," (1897). 



216 THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT D0CT1UNE. 

markable man whose school of theology, though now 
declining in influence, has been dominant in Germany 
in our day, and widely influential both in England and 
Scotland, as well as among ourselves — we mean of 
course, Ritschl. 

It is natural to consider our topic — the Unity of New 
Testament Doctrine — in the light of the Ritschlian 
method. Viewed from that standpoint it brings before 
us an issue of living interest and of the greatest import- 
ance. " It is the great merit of the Eitschlian theol- 
ogy," says a recent writer, " that it takes us back to 
the Person of the Pounder, to His mind, and His life, 
and that it finds there all the great determining ideas 
by the aid of which God and man, sin and redemption, 
life and death, are to be interpreted." True ; but it 
is based upon an untenable position — viz., that the 
Apostolic interpretations of Christ's person and teach- 
ing are to be rejected as private theologoumena ; mere 
irresponsible and unauthoritative developments of 
dogma. According to Eitschl, Apostolic theology has 
no binding authority for the Church. The Apostolic 
interpretations of the significance of the Cross and 
Passion, the Resurrection and Ascension, are not 
authoritative. We are free to accept or reject them 
as we will. In fact theologians of this school present 
us with a sadly mutilated Gospel. The Cross has for 
them no important significance. The Resurrection, 
the great Forty Days, the Ascension, the Pentecostal 
effusion of the Holy Ghost, play no part in their the- 
ology. Even the teaching of Christ is dwarfed and 
mutilated in their hands. They have forgotten that 
His teaching is to be sought in His acts as well as in 



THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE. 217 

His words. They have overlooked the significance of 
some of the most important and pregnant of His utter- 
ances concerning Himself and His doctrine. They 
have practically closed their ears to His emphatic and 
reiterated assurance that He would unfold His doc- 
trine to His apostles more fully after His resurrection 
than could be done before. And thus they reject and 
repudiate the teaching of Christ while claiming that 
He only is the authoritative Teacher. 

I. Now that there is in the New Testament a de- 
velopment of dogma will not be questioned. The 
doctrine of the Epistles is obviously more fully devel- 
oped, more systematic, more complex than that of 
the Gospels. But what of the character of that develop- 
ment ? Is it a true, a legitimate development — the 
genuine flower and fruit of the teaching of Jesus ? 
And does it come to us with the stamp of His approval, 
backed by His authority, so that the doctrine of the 
Epistles is in fact and effect the doctrine of Christ, 
developed and fashioned under the guidance of His 
spirit, and in accordance with His will ? Or, is there, 
as some eminent and able men of our time have urged, 
a distinct line of cleavage between the Gospels and the 
Epistles — a separation so broad and deep that we may 
by no means ascribe to the teaching of the Apostles 
the authority of Christ, but must regard their definite 
statements of doctrine as "individual varieties of 
opinion on the Eevelation recorded in the Gospels," 
According to this latter view, the value of the Apos- 
tolic testimony would be limited to their function as 
witnesses of fact — for example, of the Eesurrection and 
the Ascension, and the descent of the Holy Ghost ; 



218 THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT DOCTBINE. 

while their representations of the significance of those 
events — of the meaning of the Cross, of the power of 
the Eesurrection, of the mediatorial office of the As- 
cended Christ, — would be destitute of any authority, 
would have to be judged on their own merits. Being 
the inferences of fallible men from the words and acts 
of the Lord, they would be subject to the criticism of 
believers, and might be rejected or accepted, according 
to the best judgment of every inquirer. So, to quote 
from a distinguished Bampton Lecturer, "in the one 
department of their work they are true witnesses deliv- 
ering to us the words of God ; in the other, they are 
fallible men, theorizing or theologizing under the 
mingled advantages and disadvantages which might re- 
sult from their historical position. This bisection of 
the testimony of our appointed teachers leaves us the 
divine foundations of a theology, but sweeps away the di- 
vine theology itself, which they were laid to support." * 
The advocates of this view do not hesitate to speak of 
" the theological theories and peculiar views of Paul and 
John " as destitute of the authority of Eevelation. 
Even the late Professor Jowett treats the teaching of 
the Apostles, " not as an expansion, but as a reversal 
of the teaching of Christ ; " not as a more "full and 
definite, but as an absolutely different doctrine." 

Against this view it is the purpose of this essay to 
enter an emphatic dissent. In the nature of things, it 
was impossible to have a full and complete view of the 
significance of the evangelic facts and events until after 
the Eesurrection. The Incarnation, the Life of hu- 



* Bernard's " Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament." 



THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE. 219 

miliation, the Passion, could not be comprehended, or 
even truly apprehended, until they had been illu'minated 
by the Eesurrection and Ascension. A developed 
Christian theology was impossible until the whole se- 
ries of evangelic events was complete. Moreover, as 
our Lord plainly taught, the Apostles themselves could 
not understand His Mission, His Work or His Person ; 
could not really comprehend the Gospel, until the Holy 
Ghost had been given — that Spirit of Truth who was to 
lead them into all truth, and to bring all things to their 
remembrance whatsoever He had spoken unto them. 

It follows that to deny the authority of the doctrinal 
teaching of the Apostles is to deny the authority of 
Christ Himself, who commissioned and inspired them 
for their work of teaching, and said, "He that re- 
ceiveth you receiveth Me." It is to doubt the fulfill- 
ment of His promise. It is to resist the Holy Ghost, 
who came upon them with power, and illumined their 
understanding of the things of God — taking of the 
things of Christ and showing them unto them. The 
teaching of the Apostles is in fact the teaching of Jesus. 
The Gospels contain the record of what Jesus " began 
both to do and teach, until the day when He was taken 
up." The subsequent books, as Baumgarten has said, 
contain the record of what Jesus continued to do and 
teach after the day on which He was taken up." 

II. Into the question of the character of the develop- 
ment of Christian dogma subsequent to the Apostolic 
age, — whether, as the Eitschlian school maintain, the 
early Christian dogma be indeed the result of a fusion 
of Christian ideas with Greek philosophical thought, 
— into this we shall not enter. Our limits will con- 



220 THE UNITY OF NEW TESTANENT DOCTRINE. 

fine us to the preliminary stage of the discussion — viz., 
whether the apostolic teaching was or was not a true 
development of the teaching of Christ. 

We maintain that it was, and it is our purpose to 
establish that position by instituting a comparison be- 
tween the two. We shall find that, so far from the 
doctrine of St. Paul, St. John, and St. Peter being " ab- 
solutely different," as even Jowett affirmed, from the 
doctrine of Christ, it is in fact completely in harmony 
with it. There is no important development of doc- 
trine in the Epistles but has its germ in the words or 
acts of Jesus. Upon all the great cardinal doctrines 
of theology, anthropology, christology, soteriology and 
eschatology, we shall seek in vain for any point of con- 
tradiction between the Epistles and the Gospels. 

The fatherhood of God shines out as radiantly in the 
Epistles to the Komans and to the Galatians as it does 
in the Sermon on the Mount. The Deity of Jesus 
Christ is not more clearly asserted by St. Paul in his 
letters to the Colossians and the Philippians than it is 
by the Master Himself in various passages in the Gos- 
pels. The doctrine of the Trinity finds as certain ex- 
pression in the last discourses of Jesus recorded by St. 
John as in any of the classic passages in the Epistles. 

The state of man, as fallen and sinful and helpless 
and separated from God his Father, is declared by 
Jesus in His parables and in His discourses not a whit 
less clearly than by the Apostle to the Gentiles in the 
elaborate introduction to the Epistle to the Komans. 
If the latter teaches that "they are all gone out of the 
way," that "all have sinned," that "all the world is 
guilty before God," the former likens the race to a 



THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE. 221 

"lost sheep/' helpless, powerless to save itself, in peril 
of utter destruction. If St. Paul represents the Mis- 
sion of Christ as having for its purpose the redemption 
of a lost world, our Lord had as plainly declared that 
the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which 
was lost. If the Apostles with one voice declare the 
indisputable necessity of repentance toward God, Jesus 
had preached with no less emphasis, " except ye repent, 
ye shall all likewise perish." If St. Paul affirms that 
" the carnal mind is enmity against God ; n that " they 
who are in the flesh cannot please God," and that the 
only remedy for this is the indwelling of the Spirit of 
God (Rom. viii.), he does but reaffirm the teaching of 
Jesus to Nicodemus, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
ye must be born again. That which is born of the 
flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is 
spirit." 

Again, the object and intent of the Incarnation of 
the Son of God, the significance of His death and 
Passion, the power of His Cross, the indissoluble connec- 
tion between the mediation of Christ and the salvation 
of men, — all this finds as distinct expression in the 
Gospels as in the Epistles. In the latter the whole 
doctrine of soteriology is more fully developed, more 
completely and systematically treated, than in the 
former, as is natural ; but it cannot be shown that any 
essential element of that doctrine is absent from the 
Gospels, nor that the Epistles lay down any principle 
or declare any truth upon this mighty theme, the germ 
of which — nay, the substance and essence of which — 
is not contained in the words or the acts of Jesus. 

When St. Paul unfolds his doctrine of the Incarna- 



222 THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE. 

tion by declaring that " When the fullness of time was 
come God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, 
made under the law, to redeem them that were under 
the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons/* 
does he differ in any essential particular from the 
teaching of Jesus when He said to Nicodemus, "God 
so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son 
that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, 
but have everlasting life ?" Or is he at variance with 
that which the evangelist testifies of Jesus, " As many 
as received Him, to them gave He power to become the 
sons of God/* 

When St. Peter declares that " Christ died, the just 
for the unjust, that He might bring us to God/* and 
that we are " redeemed # * % * by the precious Blood 
of Christ as of a Lamb without blemish and without 
spot;** when St. Paul affirms that "we are reconciled 
to God by the death of His Son/* that Christ hath re- 
deemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a 
curse for us, and that "we have redemption through 
His Blood, even the forgiveness of sins ; '* when the 
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says, "Christ 
was once offered to bear the sins of many ; ** when St. 
John testifies with holy joy that " the blood of Jesus 
Christ cleanseth us from all sin/* and that " He is the 
propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but 
for the sins of the whole world/' — we ask, is the doc- 
trine which those and similar expressions declare in 
any wise strange to him who has carefully perused the 
Gospels, and taken note of the language of our Lord 
Jesus Christ in regard to Himself and His Work ? 
Did not Jesus permit John the Baptist, unrebuked, 



THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE. 223 

to point to Him, as He walked by the banks of the Jor- 
dan, and say, " Behold the Lamb of God that taketh 
away the sin of the world/' and is not the whole doc- 
trine of the Epistle to the Hebrews a legitimate, even 
a necessary, development from the idea which those 
famous words convey ? And hence is it not undeni- 
able that the sacrificial interpretation of the death of 
Christ has the stamp of His approval, here at the 
very threshold of His ministry ? 

But more than this. Did not Jesus use language, 
concerning Himself and His Mission, that corresponds 
with the utterances of St. Peter, St. Paul and St. John, 
just quoted ? Did He not teach that the Father had 
sent the Son into the world that the world through Him 
might be saved ? Did He not declare that the Son of 
Man came " to give His life a ransom for many " ? Did 
He not, upon the most solemn and pathetic occasion 
in His Ministry, say to His chosen disciples, "This is 
my blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for you 
and for many for the remission of sins ? " And is not 
this as clear a statement as Paul ever penned of the 
vital and essential connection that God has established 
between the sacrificial death of Jesus and the remis- 
sion of human guilt ? Did he not yet again lay pecu- 
liar stress upon the virtue of His Cross and Passion up- 
on two occasions — one at the beginning of His Minis- 
try, when He said to jSTicodemus, "As Moses lifted up 
the serpent in the Wilderness, so must the Son of Man 
be lifted up, to the end that all who believe in Him 
need not perish, but have everlasting life;" and the 
other at its close, when He cried in the Temple, on 
the last great day of His public ministry, " I, if I be 



224 THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE. 

lifted up, will draw all men unto Me," wherein He 
plainly made His power to attract the whole world to 
His feet, dependent on His being lifted up on the Cross. 
Xo one can attentively study the record of the evan- 
gelists without perceiving that Jesus not only re- 
garded His death as a predestined part of the work 
which He came to do, but that He saw in it the crown 
and consummation of His Work. The Apostles are in 
complete harmony with their Master in making the 
Cross the central point of their theology. Both in His 
teaching and in theirs it is "the diamond pivot on 
which the whole system of Christian truth revolves." 

Now when we turn from the bloody drama of Cal- 
vary, and listen to the interpretation of it which the 
Apostles give us, do we not recognize the latter as har- 
monious with the former? Indeed, the doctrine of the 
Epistles furnishes the only intelligible explanation of 
the tragedy of the Cross. The words, the acts, the 
whole bearing of Jesus from the beginning to the end 
of His Passion, find their natural interpretation in the 
language of Paul and Peter and John, when — in uni- 
son with the tone of His teaching — they speak of the 
atoning sacrifice which the Son of God offered for the 
sins of the world. 

There is no room here for "private theologoumena " 
on the part of individual apostles. To speak of Paul- 
inism, or Petrinism, or Johannism, is beside the pur- 
pose — is out of harmony with the facts. There is a 
correspondence between the teaching of Jesus and the 
apostolic development of doctrine which cannot be 
questioned for a moment. The former is carried for- 
ward to its natural development in the latter. The 



THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE. 225 

two stand related as the stalk and the grain, as the 
flower and the fruit. And both are in sharp contrast 
to the frigid teaching of Kitschl, that Christ redeemed 
us by showing us how to trust God's love -even in 
death. 

Let us take, as our next instance for comparison be- 
tween the teaching of Jesus and the dogmas of the 
Apostles, that great doctrine which is dwelt upon with 
so much fullness, and insisted on with so much earn- 
estness, by the Apostle to the Gentiles; I mean the 
doctrine of justification by faith. 

It is that which, more than any other, may be said 
to have given form and color to the Pauline theology. 
Is it then one of those " theologoumena " which, accord- 
ing to Kitschl, are to be regarded as destitute of au- 
thority, and which are not a legitimate development 
from the teaching of Christ ? We hold, on the con- 
trary, that our blessed Lord taught precisely the same 
doctrine, over and over again, both by word and act. 
Thus He tells Nicodemus that faith in the only-begot- 
ten Son of God is the instrument whereby the world is 
to be saved. The Son of Man is to be lifted up, as the 
serpent was lifted up in the Wilderness, that whoso- 
ever believeth in Him need not perish, but have ever- 
lasting life. If St. Paul declares, " There is now no 
condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus," Jesus 
Himself had taught long before that a he that be- 
lieveth on the Son of God is not condemned." If St. 
Paul, after elaborate argument, propounds the dogma 
of justification by faith in the famous words, " There- 
fore we conclude that a man is justified by faith, with- 
out the deeds of the Law," he only states more fully 



226 THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE. 

what the Master was continually teaching when he was 
on earth— the saving power of faith in the Son of God. 
"If thou canst believe/' He said to the unhappy 
father, " all things are possible to him that believeth." 
" Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace, thy sins are 
forgiven thee/' these were His words of love and power 
to the poor sin-stained woman, who crouched in tears 
at His feet, to the scandal of the self-righteous Phari- 
see. Justification by faith only could not be more 
clearly, more uncompromisingly taught than it was by 
that act of forgiveness, coupled with those words, 
"Thy faith hath saved thee." 

Another doctrine which is labeled "Pauline," is 
that of the second Adam. But how entirely does the 
teaching of Christ lay the foundation for this develop- 
ment of dogma ! Jesus represents Himself as the Son 
of Man — the representative Man. He stands before us 
in the Gospels the supreme embodiment of perfect 
though sinless humanity, and the relation which He 
sustains to mankind is thus declared, "every one who 
seeth the Son and believeth on Him shall have ever- 
lasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day" 
(John vi. 40) — words of precisely the same import as 
those in which St. Paul sums up his doctrine of the 
second Adam : " As all in Adam die, so all in Christ 
shall be made alive." " The last Adam," says the 
Apostle again, " was made a quickening spirit." " The 
Son," says the Master, " quickeneth whom He will," 
(John v. 21). Yet again St. Paul writes, " The first 
Adam is of the earth, earthy ; the second Adam is the 
Lord from heaven" — words which are the echo of those 
words of Christ, " He that is of the earth is earthy 



THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE. 227 

* * * He that cometh from heaven is above all * * * 
The Son of Man came down from heaven " (John iii. 
31, 13). 

Closely connected with this is the doctrine of the 
Besurrection, rejected by Kitschl and his school, but 
taught with so much fullness by the apostolic writers. 
In the nature of things it was a doctrine that could not 
be clearly apprehended or fully unfolded before the 
event. And hence there is a very marked and import- 
ant development of this doctrine in the Epistles as 
compared with the Gospels. Yet there is no incon- 
sistency or contradiction between them. The germ 
and the type of all that the Apostles teach is found in 
the words of Jesus. That sublime exposition of the 
Kesurrection doctrine given in I Cor. xv. is no more 
than the expansion of those great words of Christ con- 
cerning Himself, " I am the Eesurrection and the Life; 
he that believeth in Me though he were dead, yet shall 
he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me 
shall never die/ 9 "The hour is coming when the dead 
shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that 
hear shall live." 

The very analogy by which the Apostle explains the 
resurrection of the body was used by Jesus. When St. 
Paul wrote " That which thou sowest is not quickened 
except it die, and that which thou sowest, thou sowest 
not that body which shall be, but bare grain, it may 
chance of wheat, or of some other grain. But God 
giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him * * * So also is 
the resurrection of the dead," — these words of the Apos- 
tle are the echo of the words of Jesus," Verily, verily I 
say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the 



228 THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE, 

ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bring- 
eth forth much fruit." 

Yes, it is not too much to say that we must look for 
the inspiration of St. PauFs magnificent argument and 
exposition of the Kesurrection, in the words of Jesus, 
and in His Kesurrection itself. The Apostle had be- 
fore him in the Person of the Eisen Lord, and in the 
record of the great Forty Days of His resurrection- 
life, a living picture — nay, an actual instance — of what 
the Kesurrection of the just should be. It was that 
radiant vision of the Christ, victor over Death and the 
Grave, that gave him his sublime conception of the 
body " sown in corruption, raised in incorruption ; 
sown in dishonor, raised in glory; sown in weakness, 
raised in power; sown a natural body, raised a spiritual 
body." It was because he had seen the Man Christ 
Jesus in the glory and power of His resurrection that 
he was able to draw that picture of the corruptible put- 
ting on incorruption, the mortal putting on immortal- 
ity. Hence came the inspiration for that triumphant 
challenge, " Death, where is thy sting ! Grave, 
where is thy victory ? " How anti-Christian, then, is 
the view of Harnack, that the Church's faith in the 
Resurrection was the first step in the down grade ! 

It is natural to pass from the doctrine of the Kesur- 
rection to that of the Future Judgment. 

Here again we find not dissonance, but harmony, be- 
tween the teaching of Christ and the more developed 
dogma of the Apostles. Do these teach that God hath 
appointed a day in which He will judge the world in 
righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained? 
Jesus had already taught, " the Father hath committed 



THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE. 229 

all judgment unto the Son." He " hath given Him 
authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son 
•of Man." 

Do the Apostles teach that there shall be a first and 
a second resurrection, and that the dead in Christ shall 
rise first" (I Thess. iv. 16)? Jesus had taught that 
there should be " a resurrection of life" and " a resur- 
rection of damnation" (John v. 29). Is it the doctrine 
of the Apostles, with one voice, that there awaits the 
ungodly, in that final day, a revelation of wrath and a 
dread retribution for the evil deeds "done in the 
body ? " They do not teach this tremendous doctrine 
of hell one whit more plainly, or in language one whit 
more appalling, than Jesus had taught it, over and 
over again, from the beginning to the end of His min- 
istry — even in the Sermon on the Mount; even in His 
last discourses to His disciples. Nay, it is from His 
life of love and pity and truth, that fall, perhaps, the 
most solemn warnings of the tremendous issues of our 
earthly probation. It is in his parables and discourses 
that the most vivid and awful images of the final doom 
of the impenitent are found. 

We need not enter upon the question of how this 
language of the Master is to be interpreted. Our con- 
tention is simply that the same language, the same 
images, the same solemn warnings are found in the 
teachings of Jesus as in that of the Apostles. On no 
subject is there a more complete correspondence be- 
tween the teaching of Jesus and the dogma of the Apos- 
tles than in this. Such phrases as "the wrath of God," 
"the outer darkness," "the weeping and gnashing of 
teeth," "the damnation of hell," "the loss of the 



230 THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE. 

soul" are of frequent recurrence in the discourses and 
parables of Jesus. God's love, as Jesus unfolds it, is 
not (as has been well said) "invertebrate amiability/' ' 
His whole teaching is penetrated and inspired by the 
conviction of the tremendous issue of human probation. 
He sets before the world an open door, and entreats 
men to enter it and be saved; but He ever warns them 
that the time is coming when the door will be shut, and 
tears and entreaties will not avail to open it again. 
And finally when St. Paul taught that the wicked 
should be punished " with everlasting destruction " he 
did but repeat his Master's teaching, "Fear not them 
who kill the body and after that have nothing more that 
they can go; but I will forewarn you Whom ye shall 
fear. Fear Him who when He hath killed hath power 
to destroy both soul and body in hell. Yea, I say unto 
you, Fear Him!" 

In the face of all this, Eitschl has not hesitated to 
eliminate eschatology entirely from the teaching of 
Christ! 

Again Paul's doctrine of the pre-existence of Christ 
has been criticized by the school of Eitschl as a private 
theologoumenon of the Apostle, as one of the idols of 
the time. 

But wherein does it differ essentially from the doc- 
trine of Jesus, when He said to the Jews, "Before 
Abraham was I am ; " and to His disciples, "I came 
down from heaven, I came forth from the Father. 
Again I leave the world and go to the Father." 
And again, " Father, glorify Thou Me with the glory 
which I had with Thee before the world was." 

If time allowed it could be shown that, upon many 



THE UNITY OF NEW TEBTAMENT DOCTRINE. 231 

other phases of Christian doctrine, the harmony be- 
tween the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels and that of 
the Apostles in the rest of the New Testament is com- 
plete; although, in the latter, there is a genuine devel- 
opment on the lines of the type found in the former. 
Look, for example, at the portrait of the great High 
Priest in the Epistle to the Hebrews — "holy, harmless 
undefiled, separate from sinners," "tempted in all 
points like as we are, yet without sin," " able to be 
touched with a feeling of our infirmities," — and then 
look at the Jesus of the Gospels, tempted in the wilder- 
ness, the ideal of perfect manhood, calmly asserting His 
sinlessness, ("which of you convinceth me of sin?") — 
yet ever manifesting the tenderest sympathy for human 
weakness and human sorrow ("who Himself took our 
infirmities ") — weeping at the grave of Lazarus, weep- 
ing over Jerusalem, and throwing the mantle of charity 
over the unfaithful disciples and over the penitent 
Magdalen. Mark also, how that mystical union which 
St. Paul so frequently asserts between Christ and His 
people (in such words as "I live, yet not I, but Christ 
liveth in me," and " Christ in you, the hope of glory ") 
was declared by Jesus in such passages as John xv ; 
" I am the vine, ye are the branches. As the branch 
cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, 
no more can ye except ye abide in Me." 

Or, take the teaching of St. Paul touching the propae- 
deutic function of the Law ("the Law was our school- 
master to bring us to Christ "), and note its anticipa- 
tion in the teaching of Jesus, " Had ye believed Moses 
ye would have believed Me, for he wrote of Me," and 
again, " I am not come to destroy (the Law and the 



232 THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT DOCTBINE. 

prophets) but to fulfill ; n and yet again in His method 
of awakening the sense of sin by bringing the soul face 
to face with the strict requirements of the Decalogue 
(cf. John vii. 19, iv. 22 ; Kom. ix. 4, 5.) 

As to the authority of the Scriptures, it is unneces- 
sary to remind any reader of the New Testament how 
clearly, repeatedly and emphatically it is declared by 
Jesus. We do not observe any " development of 
dogma " upon this topic in the Apostolic teaching — 
much less any inconsistency or antagonism. 

The same may be said of the doctrine of the Holy 
Spirit, as will appear from a comparison of John xiv. 
and xv. with Eom. viii., I Cor. xii. and Gal.y. 

As to the doctrine of election, it is taught by Jesus 
in many passages ; and it may truly be said that there 
is as much, or as little, Calvinism in the Gospels as in 
the Epistles (John vi. 44, 65, xvii. 2, xv. 16, 19, 25.) 

That unfortunate perversion and misunderstanding 
of the gospel would not be banished from the field of 
theology by the excision of every word that St. Paul ever 
wrote. It would still find an alleged, though superficial, 
basis in the teaching of Jesus. If it had stumbled 
over the 8th and 9th of Romans, it would still stumble 
(after Romans had been discredited) over such utter- 
ances as these : " Many are called, but few are chosen," 
"All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me ; " 
" No man can come to me, except the Father who hath 
sent Me draw him ; " " No man can come unto me, ex- 
cept it were given Him of my Father ; " " Ye have not 
chosen Me, but I have chosen you ; " "I have chosen 
you out of the world ; " and "Thou has given Him 
power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life 
to as many as Thou hast given Him." 



THE UNITY OF NEW TESTAMENT DOCTBINE. 233 

In conclusion, we lay down the following propositions: 

1. It was the teaching of Christ that His personal 
teaching was incomplete, that the Holy Spirit should 
take it up where He laid it down, and carry it to perfec- 
tion; and that the Apostles should be the vehicles of 
the Spirit's teaching to the Church. 

2. The Apostles actually did carry forward the 
teaching of their Master, claiming to teach under the 
inspiration of the Holy Ghost. 

3. A close comparison between the teaching of Christ 
and that of the Apostles shows conclusively that the 
two are harmonious, the germ and type of the latter 
being unmistakably recognizable in the former. 

4. From this the conclusion is sure and unassailable 
that the teaching of Christ runs through the whole New 
Testament — is, in fact, coterminous with it, except in 
such parts of the apostolic counsel as are declared by 
themselves to be without express divine sanction. 
And hence, 

5. The test and touchstone of the development of 
Christian Dogma, since the days of the Apostles, is to 
be found in the New Testament taken as a whole — e. g., 
in the Epistles no less than in the Gospels. 



*Note. On p. 226 I have ventured to give what I believe to 
be the true rendering of St. Paul's words in 1 Cor. xv. 22 : 

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1ZaVTE$ $UOTZOl7]$7]COVTCU. 



X. 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF 
PRAYER. 



44 iprager arOent, opens beav'n," 

Young, Night Thoughts. 

44 prater, man's rational prerogative/' 

Wordsworth. 

44 2>en£ us for our goofc ; so finD we profit 
3Be losing of our praters/' 

Shakspeare. 



THE CHRISTIAN" DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

The instinct that leads man to call upon God in 
prayer is one of the deepest and strongest in the human 
breast. It finds expression among all the families of 
the earth and in all ages of the world. And every- 
where it seems to rest upon the conviction that the 
appeal of human need to divine power will not be in 
vain. As an example, we find that noble Pagan, Socra- 
tes, bidding Timasus, their astronomer, who is about to 
discourse upon the nature of the universe, " first offer 
up a prayer as is customary ; " to which Tim»us re- 
plies, " that all men who have any degree of right feel- 
ing do this at the beginning of every enterprise, great 
or small, — they always call upon the gods." * 

Belief in the efficacy of prayer is in fact a corollary 
of belief in the existence of a God who governs and 
guides the Universe and who cares for the creatures 
He has made. — If God is not only the Creator, but the 
Upholder and Governor of the world ; if the forces of 
Nature are under his control and obey His will ; and 
if He stands in a paternal, or even a benevolent rela- 
tion to mankind ; then prayer is not only natural but 
also reasonable. It is legitimated by God's government 
of the world. Prayer and Providence stand or fall to- 

* Jowett's Plato Timaeus, 27, p. 523. 



238 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

gether. If there be a providential government of the 
Universe, then it must be as rational as it is natural 
to pray. Only by impeaching either the freedom or 
the benevolence of God, can the efficacy of prayer be 
denied on grounds of reason. The order of Nature is 
not rigid. It is not like a piece of machinery that can 
only move in a fixed grove ; but rather like a living tree 
whose branches respond to the lightest breath of the 
wind. " Order (says Van Oosterzee) is something 
glorious and sacred ; but only where in, and beside and 
if necessary above Order, is recognized the Freedom 
of God, can one continue to speak of an adorable 
government of God." 

It is our purpose in this essay to examine briefly the 
Christian Doctrine of Prayer, and to give some of 
the reasons why we hold steadfastly to it, in spite of the 
plausible objections urged against it. 

Now it is at once evident that in the atmosphere of 
Christian ideas, the conception of prayer is immensely 
expanded and elevated. As the Fatherhood of God is 
revealed in Christianity with a clearness and a fulness, 
never known before, so the power and privilege of 
prayer (which is the voice of the child to its Father,) 
are set in a clearer light than ever before. 

To the Christian, prayer means much more than 
petition. It is not a mere cry for help, or for deliver- 
ance from some peril, or for the obtaining of some de- 
sired object. It is rather a communing with God : 
the human soul consciously realizing to itself the 
Divine presence ; seeking to hold spiritual commu- 
nion with Him ; the child speaking to its Father, pour- 
ing out its heart to Him with a freedom and a fulness 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 239 

impossible in any human intercourse. It includes ad- 
oration, praise, thanksgiving, as well as the confession 
of sin and the invocation of the Father's forgiveness, 
and the supplication for needed blessings. 

Thus petition — the asking for something — is only 
one of the elements of Christian prayer. The disciple 
of Jesus enters daily into his closet, not primarily or 
chiefly to present a petition, to ask for something, but 
to hold fellowship with God his Father through the 
Holy Spirit — to climb to Pisgah's height and behold 
the vision of the spiritual world — to leave earth behind 
him for a little and have "his eyes unsealed" to the 
heavenly things of the divine Eevelation. 

And when he comes to present his petitions, they 
are not first, or chiefly for what we call temporal bless- 
ings, but for the spiritual things which are of so much 
greater moment. "Give us this day our daily bread" 
means for him much more than the supply of the needs 
of the body. It is a cry for divine grace, for strength 
to resist temptation, for light from above upon his 
earthly path, for direction in perplexity, for the in- 
spiration of the Holy Ghost. He profoundly feels his 
need of these things day by day, and he fervently be- 
lieves that when he prays for them, he will not pray 
in vain. 

We cannot too often remind ourselves that the chief 
emphasis in the Christian idea of prayer is upon such 
petitions as these. 

But this is not the only direction that a Christian 
man's prayers will take. He will also pray for blessings 
in the physical sphere. When he is in peril, by land 
or by water, he will pray for deliverance. When pesti- 



240 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

lence is abroad in the land he will pray that it may be 
stayed. When sickness has smitten down one very 
dear to him, he will pray that the precious life may be 
spared. When drought is upon the land, he will pray 
that the God of heaven and earth will be pleased to 
send us rain in our necessity. In short he will obey 
the holy apostle's injunction, "In everything by 
prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your re- 
quests be made known unto God." 

What then ? Do we Christians believe God will 
surely give us all these things in answer to our prayers ? 
Let us state more fully what our position is. We be- 
lieve that God is the hearer of prayer and the re- 
warder of them that diligently seek Him. We believe, 
as St. James has taught us, that in many instances " the 
prayer of faith shall save the sick." We believe 
that God can deliver from the hand of man, and from 
the power of disease and death, and that he often does 
deliver from them in answer to earnest, persevering 
prayer. In a word we believe in the power of prayer. 
But we hold all this subject to the conditions and lim- 
itations under which this power is given to men. One 
of these conditions is that the prayer shall be a prayer 
of faith — an "effectual, fervent prayer." Another is 
that it shall be offered in submission to the Divine 
Will. " Thy will, not mine, be done " is a necessary 
element in every acceptable prayer. Another is that 
we recognize "our ignorance in asking," and there- 
fore invoke the Divine Wisdom to grant or deny our 
request, as He shall see fit. " If we ask anything ac- 
cording to His will He heareth us." Prayer, then, is 
not an amulet, or a wishing-cap, but it is the spontai^ 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 241 

eous expression of our wants, our fears, our hopes — the 
outpouring and unburdening of our hearts in the 
ear of our Father God. As the trusting child runs to 
his father with his wants and his troubles and his 
fears, so do we take everything to the mercy seat. We 
go and tell Jesus. We cast all our care upon Him 
for this world, as well as for the next, believing that 
He will order all for the best, giving us the things we 
ask, if it be consistent with His wise and holy will, and 
withholding them when He sees it to be otherwise. 
In this we gladly acquiesce. Indeed, we would think 
prayer a fatal gift without these limitations. 

More than this, we recognize that there are many 
things which, being fixed by the fiat of the Almighty, 
are not legitimate objects of prayer. And we ac- 
knowledge our inability to define sharply the bound- 
ary between these two classes of objects — between 
things which can, and things which cannot, be ob- 
tained by prayer ; but it is our happiness to express all 
our wants to our heavenly Father, and leave it with 
Him to answer us according to His unfailing wisdom 
and His infinite compassion. It may be that some- 
times, in unwitting presumption, we ask what we 
ought not, as did the mother of Zebedee's children on 
a memorable occasion. It may be that sometimes in 
our ignorance we prefer petitions which, in the nature 
of things, it is impossible God should grant. It may 
be again that sometimes the petitions of different 
Christians clash, so that to grant those of one would 
be, ipso facto, to deny those of another. What then ? 
"Is God unfaithful that promised?" Is prayer, 
therefore, a delusion ? — If indeed we claimed that 



242 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

prayer did service as a talisman or a charm such a 
conclusion would be justified. But as I have already- 
remarked, neither the Scriptures nor the Church give 
any such definition of prayer. According to their fili- 
form teachings, prayer is the expression of our need to 
Him who is able to supply it. It is the cry of our 
creature hearts to him who has created them. Whether 
it is best, whether it is right, whether it is possible, 
that our petitions should be granted we do not know ; 
but this we know, our Father has heard our prayer, 
and will give us, if not that we ask for, something as 
good or better. If He remove not the thorn in the 
flesh, He will make His grace sufficient for us ; He 
will make His strength perfect in our weakness, so that 
we will in the end glory in our infirmity, that the 
power of Christ may rest upon us. If He give not 
victory to our armies, He will make defeat better than 
victory to those who humbly bow to His will. If He 
spare not the dear life for which we plead, He will give 
us, perhaps in the very chamber of death, a new in- 
spiration to walk in His ways, and a new intuition of 
the things unseen and eternal, and thus, even in this 
world, " death shall be swallowed up in victory." 

But with all these limitations it remains true that we 
believe Prayer has power in the physical sphere, and 
herein lies the difficulty which presses so strongly upon 
many minds. 

This difficulty and its origin may be briefly stated. 
It is the proud boast of modern science that it 
has demonstrated the unity and universality of cos- 
mical law. This magnificent and complex frame of 
Nature is one ; it is a unit, a universe. And it is held 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 243 

together by a system of universal laws, whose sway ex- 
tends throughout the illimitable extent of the creation, 
binding alike the smallest atom and the greatest planet. 
Gravitation, for example, which governs the motion of 
the orange as it falls from the tree, governs also the 
courses of the most distant suns and stars. The same 
chemical laws that are observed in substances on this 
globe of ours obtain also in the great Sun itself — of 
this the spectrum gives us palpable demonstration. 
And as these laws are universal in space, so they are 
also universal in the sphere of time — of this geology, as 
she reads, in the strange palimpsest of the rocks, the 
story of remote prehistoric ages, gives us firm as- 
surance. In a word, all things through all ages, seem 
bound with a chain of physical necessity by the law of 
cause and effect. 

Now it is urged that so long as this unity and uni- 
formity of natural law was not known or understood, 
men found no difficulty in believing that God might 
intervene in the affairs of the world in answer to 
prayer, but that now, in the light of this wonderful 
order which has been unveiled to our eyes by modern 
science, it is no longer possible to believe rationally in 
the efficacy of prayer for physical benefits. "For," 
says the objector, "your doctrine of the efficacy of 
prayer in the physical sphere breaks up this order, 
since it supposes the laws which hold the universe to- 
gether suspended or abrogated at the bidding of man. 
The laws of hygiene must be repealed in answer to 
this man's prayer ; the course of the tides and the 
winds must be altered for that man's prayer ! And 
thus the whole order of the universe is liable to con- 



244 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER, 

stant disturbance that the petitions of such puny 
creatures as we may be granted ! " 

We answer, such an objection rests upon a misreading 
of the results of modern science, and of the require- 
ments of the Christian doctrine of prayer. 

It is not true that everything in the Universe is fixed 
by an unchangeable order. A system of general laws 
exists, and it constitutes a sublime and wonderful Or- 
der, in the presence of which we bow in lowly adora- 
tion of the infinite power and wisdom of God. But 
we observe in this order of nature the quality of elas- 
ticity, which leaves room for the action upon that 
order of a force outside of physical phenomena, acting 
upon and modifying the operation of physical laws. 
That force is the human will. Here is a potency 
which is continually brought to bear upon Nature, 
which is yet not under the dominion of physical law, 
and which cannot be reduced to any one of the cate- 
gories of physical forces, but is, on the contrary, free 
and unfettered in its action. 

Consequently, to represent the Universe as under 
the bond of uniform law, undisturbed, unmodified by 
any force or power outside the realm of physical nature 
is to completely misrepresent the actual state of the 
case. We are not caught in the coil of an iron chain of 
necessary causes and effects. The Universe does not 
move like a machine in one fixed groove by the force of 
unchangeable law. 

For on all sides we see this force outside of nature, 
the will of man, acting upon the chain of cause and 
effect, moving it, modifying the operation of physical 
laws, changing the order of physical nature — doing, 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 2±5 

in a word, the very thing we are told God cannot do ! 
This imponderable, incalculable spiritual force, the 
will of man, takes hold of the chain of natural causes, 
and turns a wilderness into a garden ; or cuts a chan- 
nel through the isthmus of Suez ; or drains a marsh 
and makes it a fruitful field. 

In all these instances man interferes with and modi- 
fies the course of natural law by his free will, but he 
does not violate the natural order ; he does not sus- 
pend it. 

Even so when we Christians believe that prayer has 
power in the physical sphere, we do not expect the 
laws of nature to be violated, or set aside, but we do 
believe that the Creator can move and act in and 
through the forces of His own Universe with at least 
as much freedom as man. 

We do not imagine that the system of the Universe 
is to be put out of joint for our sakes ; but we believe 
that God has so ordered that system, in His wisdom 
and benevolence, that by an act of His will He can so 
direct the operation of those laws as to rescue his sup- 
pliant creatures from the perils of the deep or from 
the grasp of disease ; that He can give rain and fruit- 
ful seasons at His will in the same manner ; in short, 
that there is no physical danger from which He can- 
not deliver, nor any physical benefit which He cannot 
bestow. 

In fact the more closely we scrutinize the supposed 
inconsistency between the order of Nature and the ef- 
ficacy of prayer, the more unreal it is found to be. 
Unless we exclude God entirely from His own world, 
and adopt the creed of the materialist or the pan- 



246 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

theist, we can offer no intelligible or logical reason for 
doubting the power of the Father of all to hear and 
answer the prayers of his children. But we may remind 
you that materialism no longer reigns in the intellec- 
tual world. Twenty-six or seven years ago — about 
the time that Mr. Tyndall shocked the conscience of the 
Christian world by his famous challenge to put the 
efficacy of prayer to the test of scientific experiments, 
the Westminster Review could claim that the only creed 
for a man of culture was the creed of the materialist — 
and materialism was the prevalent belief among men 
of science. To-day materialism is completely eclipsed 
among men of science by some form or other of the 
spiritual view of the Universe. It is becoming more 
generally recognized that the Universe must have had 
a spiritual origin, and that behind visible phenomena 
there is an Unseen World of powers and forces that 
cannot be measured and calculated by the physical 
scientist. A whole world of psychical phenomena not 
hitherto clearly recognized is rising to the view of our 
philosophers. Man himself is more than ever a 
mystery, a bundle of mysteries, a being endowed with 
mysterious powers and capacities not hitherto dreamed 
of. The power of mind over matter is amazing the stu- 
dent. In the presence of such a mighty movement of 
thought in the direction of belief in a vast spiritual 
order, embracing and overlapping the physical order, 
the objections alleged to the reasonableness of be- 
lief in the efficacy of prayer — that is, to the power of 
the Creator to respond, through natural processes, or 
independently of them, to the petitions of His crea- 
tures — these objections more and more lose their force. 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 247 

And so, as the century closes, the intellect of the 
world may be expected to yield more and more its as- 
sent to the creed so nobly expressed by Alfred Tenny- 
son, near the middle of the century, 

M More things are wrought by prayer 

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice 

Kise like a fountain for me night and day. 

For what are men better than sheep or goats, 

That nourish a blind life within the brain, 

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 

Both for themselves and those that call them friend, 

For so the whole round earth is every way 

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." 



[Allusion has been made above to the proposition 
made by Prof. Tyndall to subject the value of prayer 
for physical benefits to a scientific test. More than a 
quarter of a century has elapsed since that extraordi- 
nary proposal was made, but the questions raised there- 
by are of enduring interest, and from time to time 
essentially the same tests of the efficacy of prayer are 
suggested, though in different forms. Thus a recent 
writer discusses the same subject in the light of the 
prayers offered by Christian people for the deliverance 
of the Missionaries in China and their converts from 
massacre. For this reason the following extracts from 
an article of our own on the Thompson-Tyndall Prayer 
Test* are appended as a further elucidation of the sub- 
ject of this essay.] 



* See The Southern Keview, July, 1873. 



248 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 
OF THE PROPOSED SCIENTIFIC PRAYER TEST. 

"Before turning our attention to the merits of the 
proposed test, we may remark, that for a scientist to 
step forth before the world with a method for ascertain- 
ing the value of prayer, in whatever aspect, strikes us 
as very decidedly out of character. What has the 
disciple of physical science to do with a subject which 
transcends altogether the sphere of the senses ? None 
have more emphatically declared than scientists them- 
selves that the laboratory is their sphere; that the 
furnace and the retorts are their instruments; that the 
investigation of the laws and properties of matter con- 
stitutes their vocation. None have insisted more 
strenuously than they on the necessity of keeping 
scientific questions clear of entanglement with the 
dogmas of the metaphysician and the theologian. 
None have more sharply animadverted on the alleged 
practice of the advocates of religion in past ages, in 
interfering with questions which belong exclusively to 
the domain of science. What must be thought, then, 
of the consistency of these gentlemen in proposing a 
scientific test of a religious question, and that in an age 
when the independence of the two spheres of thought 
is generally acknowledged by religious people, and the 
blunder and the crime perpetrated in the name of the 
Church in the favorite instance of Galileo, confessed 
by all save the adherents of the Church of Eome ? 
Certainly they would have had no right to complain if 
the disciples of Christianity had refused point blank 
to listen to their proposition as involving not only an 
impertinent intrusion of science upon the domain of 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, OF PRAYER. 249 

religion, but a glaring inconsistency with their own 
previous declarations upon this subject. The rebuke 
of Apelles to the cobbler who undertook to criticise 
his picture would have been a fair and sufficient answer 
— Stick to your last, gentlemen, ne sutor ultra crepi- 
dam! 

"Waiving this summary method of dealing with the 
question, however, and taking the prayer-test on its 
own merits, we find several insuperable objections to 
employing it. 

"In the first place, supposing it to result favorably to 
the views of those who have faith in the efficacy of 
prayer for physical benefits, it is difficult to see what 
good could result from it. The Christian Church 
certainly needs no such demonstration of the power of 
prayer. The word of promise which she has received 
from her Lord is enough for her; or, if she needed ex- 
amples of its power, she has ten thousand of them in 
her own annals, as every Christian of ripened experi- 
ence has them in the annals of his own life. As to the 
sceptics and unbelievers, it may be questioned whether 
they would be silenced; they would certainly not be 
convinced. They would probably demand a repetition 
of the experiment, or else discover some method of 
accounting for its success short of the hypothesis that 
prayer had anything to do with it. It is hardly prob- 
able that men who resist the accumulated evidence of 
the divine origin of Christianity would yield submis- 
sion to its teaching upon the successful issue of such a 
test as this. We should be told that the inherent 
improbability of the prayer of faith saving the sick is 
so great that 'no amount of testimony is sufficient to 



250 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRATER. 

overcome it/ In short, as they have dealt with the 
miracles of the Gospels, as they have dealt with the re- 
corded instances of the power of prayer for physical 
objects, so would they deal with this test, supposing it 
to result favorably to the Christian position. ' If they 
hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be 
persuaded though one rose from the dead/ 

"This proposition finds its counterpart on two re- 
markable occasions in our Lord's life. The one was 
when the Pharisees and Scribes came to him, tempting 
him, and asked of him a sign from heaven. They had 
seen his miracles — the healing of the sick, the giving 
sight to the blind, the raising of the dead; but this was 
not enough for them. They must have a sign from 
heaven, wrought at their bidding. Now they could 
have no greater sign than they had already seen, and 
therefore, Jesus, knowing the futility of external signs 
and wonders to change the hardness of the unbelieving 
heart, sighed deeply in spirit, grieved at their unbelief, 
and said, ' An evil and adulterous generation seeketh 
after a sign, and there shall no sign be given unto it 
but the sign of the prophet Jonas/ The other occa- 
sion, which we cite as furnishing a parallel to the propo- 
sition in question, was when our Lord was hanging on 
the cross, and those same chief priests and elders, with 
the Scribes and Pharisees, mocking, cried, 'Let 
Christ, the King of Israel, come down from the cross, 
and we will believe him ! ' But Jesus came not down, 
even as he would not work the sign from heaven at 
their bidding, because in either case it would have been 
futile. Love and Power had done their utmost to win 
them. 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 251 

" And yet it is probable that intellectual assent might 
have been forced upon them; for the proof of his divine 
mission might have been made so overwhelming that 
they could not gainsay or resist it. But they would have 
been, in that case, no step nearer Christ's religion than 
before. Men are not to be converted ly force, whether 
of the sword, or of the fagot, or of logical demonstra- 
tion, one of which is as much at variance with its prin- 
ciples as the other. It implies in its essential idea a 
moral probation— an appeal to the principle of faith 
within a man, and, therefore, it does not offer us an ab- 
solute demonstration of its divine origin, but only a 
very high degree of probability. This must be so by 
reason of the nature of the case, for religion can no 
more sway a man through his intellect than light can 
affect the sensorium through the ear. 

" This, then, were reason enough, without going fur- 
ther, for declining such a test of the value of prayer — 
it is not likely the success of the test would accom- 
plish any beneficial result, 

" But there are weightier reasons than this. We men- 
tion two of them t The first is, that the 'prayer 
gauge ' is at variance with the Christian conception of 
prayer. This concert of prayer, to which Dr. Thomp- 
son and Mr. Tyndall invite the Christian world, has for 
its object, not the benefit of the sick, but the ascertain- 
ment of the efficacy of prayer. Its author tells us he 
designed ' an inquiry to ascertain the value of prayer 
for the sick/ If, then, Christians should accept this 
invitation to pray for the sick in Ward No. 1, what 
would be their attitude ? It would be no more or less 
than this — while professedly praying for the sick, they 



252 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

would be really praying for a sign from heaven to con- 
vince unbelievers of the power of prayer ! Now it 
would be impious presumption to approach the Hearer 
of prayer for any such purpose. He has given men 
such evidence and attestation of the Christian Eevela- 
tion as his wisdom has deemed sufficient, above all that 
sign of the prophet Jonas, the resurrection of Jesus the 
third day. Shall we then, by such an approach to the 
mercy seat as is proposed, join the Pharisees and Scribes 
when they asked a sign from heaven ? Shall we say, 
in effect: '0 Lord, thou hast not given sufficient evi- 
dehce of thy religion; heal these sick that men may 
be compelled to believe/ * * * This test of prayer, then, 
is destructive of the very idea of prayer. It proposes an 
object for which we are not authorized to pray, and 
puts the supplicant in the attitude of a hypocrite, pray- 
ing ostensibly for one thing, really for another. It is, 
therefore, an unphilosophical as well as an unreason- 
able test. It is like insisting that a chemist should 
test the power of a certain acid on a solution, into 
which you have introduced an alkali, which neutral- 
izes the effect of the acid ! We are challenged to 
prove the power of prayer by a test, which, in its very 
terms, neutralizes its power. 

"Another fatal objection to the proposition in ques- 
tion is, that it eliminates an essential element of prayer 
—submission to the will of God. We are to pray for 
the sick in Ward No. 1 and we are to take no denial of 
our petitions! We are to omit that petition without 
which prayer ceases to be prayer — ' Thy will be done! 9 
We are to overlook the possibility of there being suffi- 
cient reasons for denying our petition ! We are to for- 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRATER. 253 

get all our Savior's teachings on this point ! We are to 
disregard His example in the garden ! In short, we are 
to dictate to the Almighty the healing of the sick, and, 
in the event of their not being healed, we are to con- 
clude that prayers for the sick are futile, and thence to 
deduce the wider conclusion, that prayer has no phys- 
ical value ! Here, again, we justly complain that this 
" scientific test " is unscientific. You give us a sub- 
stance to analyze, and, lo, you have eliminated before 
hand a necessary element of its power ! We are to 
determine the value of prayer by a test which, at the 
very outset, overthrows the nature of prayer. 

" These, then, are some of the reasons why this mode 
of determining the physical value of prayer is deemed 
unphilosophical and unreliable. They are, however, 
only the branches of a deeper reason which lies at the 
root of the whole subject. Religious questions — and 
prayer in all its aspects is a religious question — are not 
to be determined ly scientific methods. Each kingdom 
has its appropriate laws and methods. In mathema- 
tics we have one method; in physical science another; 
in metaphysics another; in morals and religion still 
another. Now this proposition of Prof. Tyndall's 
friend is an attempt to apply the inductive method 
to the settlement of a religious question. It is just as 
unreasonable as it would be to require the disciple of 
physical science to give us a mathematical proof of all 
his positions, or as it would be to require a logi- 
cal demonstration of the duty of speaking the truth ! 
These scientific men say, ' Let us see that prayer con- 
fers any physical benefit on men, and we will believe 
it. Prove your doctrine by our scientific methods/ 



25-4 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

We meet them with their own weapon and reply, 
f Give us mathematical proof of your theories about 
light, and heat, and sound. These experimental proofs 
are not satisfactory. The senses are deceptive. There 
may be optical delusion/ Or suppose we say to Prof. 
Tyndall, 'You tell us we cannot take one step in 
science without the exercise of imagination. But this 
is not stable ground. We want ocular demonstration 
of your theories. Let us see this imponderable ether 
which you tell us pervades all space, and becomes the 
medium of light. Let us see these waves of light and 
sound and we will believe you.' Who does not see that 
the one demand would be as unreasonable and absurd 
as the other ? It would be attempting to apply the 
laws and the methods of one sphere of knowledge to 
the phenomena of another, which has its own laws and 
its own methods. 

" On the whole, it is apparent that a proposition in- 
volving such a confusion of ideas, and such an unwar- 
ranted intrusion of physical science upon the domain of 
metaphysics, could have sprung not so much from a 
desire to reach a scientific result, as from a desire to 
coin an atheistic argument. The incongruity, incon- 
sistency, and unphilosophical character of the ' scien- 
tific test ' are not more manifest than the disingen- 
uousness of its author. 

"We pass on to consider what is the position of the 
Christian Church touching the physical value of 
prayer. Prof. Tyndall is right when he says, ' Prayer 
invokes a Power which checks and augments the des- 
cent of rain, which changes the force and direction of 
winds, which affects the growth of corn and the health 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 255 

of men and cattle/ This is substantially our position. 
We believe that God is the rewarder of them that dili- 
gently seek him. We believe, as St. James has taught 
us, that the prayer of faith saves the sick in many in- 
stances. We believe that God can deliver from the 
hand of men and from the power of disease and death, 
and that he does deliver from them in answer to faith- 
ful prayer. And we do not object to men's examining 
the records of the past history of the power of prayer 
for these objects. We think it is reasonable that if 
prayer avails for physical benefits we should have 
experience of it; and so we have. It is not this to 
which we demur. We can point to many well authen- 
ticated instances of the efficacy of prayer in our own 
generation; as for example, in the lives of Franke 
and Mliller. But we hold all this, not forgetful 
of the conditions and limitations under which this 
power is given to men; above all, of that saying of St. 
John, ' If we ask anything according to His will, he 
heareth us/ 

" But our opponents insist in reply, ' that (on our 
own showing) the phenomena of the universe are 
ranged in two categories — first, a class of events re- 
specting which it is quite useless to pray; and, second, a 
class of events which are the legitimate objects of 
prayer ! ' They make much also of the fact that we do 
not agree among ourselves as to the extent at these two 
classes respectively ; and pointing to the history of 
science, they remind us how many things in the 
universe are now known to be regulated by an un- 
changing order, which were once supposed to be con- 



25G THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

tingent and mutable, and then they confidently pre- 
dict that, step by step, we shall find as science 
advances, that all things are regulated by the same 
unchanging order ; so that, little by little, we shall 
have the sphere of objects for which we can legiti- 
mately pray narrowed down, until future generations 
shall find that since all things are unchangeably fixed 
by law, the practice of praying for physical benefits has 
all along been a monstrous absurdity. 

" But we ask, is the existence of a class of objects 
which are fixed, and therefore not legitimate objects 
of prayer, a valid argument to prove that all things 
are so fixed ? Because there are fixed stars, are there, 
therefore, no planets, no nebulae, no asteroids, no 
meteoric stones ? Because man cannot move the 
mountains from their bases, is he thence to conclude it 
an impossible task to construct a road over them, or to 
tunnel through them, by his industry and skill ? And 
is it more reasonable to argue that because man can- 
not, by his prayers, turn the earth from its orbit, there- 
fore, he cannot by the same instrumentality obtain the 
blessing of heaven on his fields and his cattle, on his 
home and his household ? * * * * 

" This view of prayer, which, as the only one taught in 
the Holy Scriptures, is the only one which ought to be 
considered, makes its comprehension, its comfort, and 
its power dependent on faith in God's promise and sub- 
mission to God's will, and must satisfy any candid 
mind of the futility of any inductive experiments to 
determine its efficacy. Some of our modern scientists, 
however, would overthrow this conception of prayer 
and substitute one of their own. For they are not 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 257 

prayerless, they would give us to understand. By no 
means ! On the contrary, ' their life is a perpetual 
prayer ! ' All their patient toil in the laboratory is 
prayer to c their God/ whatever those two words may 
signify in the scientific lexicon. And they expect an 
answer to their prayers ; unquestionably they do, for 
Prof. Tyndall has just been showing us how his prayers 
have been answered, in those beautiful experiments of 
his on light and sound. But let these gentlemen tell 
us if they know beforehand whether these l prayers ' of 
theirs to Nature to reveal her secrets will be granted. 
Can they define sharply these two classes of things — 
those which it is ' quite useless ' to pray Nature to re- 
veal, and those which she will reveal ? In other words, 
do they know beforehand what problems in science they 
will succeed in solving, and what must remain hidden 
from this generation ? If not, it would seem that the 
prayer of the scientific laboratory is open to the same 
charge which Dr. Thompson alleges against the prayer 
of the Christian oratory. 

" The real objection in the minds of these gentlemen 
is developed in their second papers and is just what those 
familiar with the subject anticipated it would be. The 
universe is governed by fixed laws : wherever the in- 
vestigator has been able to penetrate within the veil of 
Nature, he has found a settled order holding sway. Now, 
he says to the Christian, your doctrine of the efficacy 
of prayer for physical benefits breaks up this order, for 
it supposes the laws which hold the universe together, 
suspended or abrogated at the bidding of man ! * m * * 
We challenge the premises upon which this argument 
rests. "We deny that everything in the universe is 



258 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

fixed by an unchangeable order, as is alleged. That a 
system of general laws exists, binding together the dif- 
ferent parts of the universe, is indeed true, and none 
admires and rejoices in this more than the Theist, as 
none but he can give an intelligible account of the 
origin of such a system. But the order of Nature ex- 
hibits what Dr. Mausel has happily called the quality 
of elasticity; it permits the introduction of another 
force, outside of the physical world, which acts upon 
and modifies the operation of physical laws. That force 
is the human" will. * * * * Here is man, with his free 
will, incessantly interfering with these laws of Nature, 
and yet none of the dire consequences ensue which we 
are told must inevitably result if God interferes with 
them. 

" Let us borrow an illustration from the distinguished 
writer just referred to: ' If a man, of his own free will, 
throws a stone into the air, the motion of the stone, as 
soon as it has left his hand, is determined by a combi- 
nation of purely material laws, partly by the attraction 
of the earth, partly by the resistance of the air, partly 
by the magnitude and direction of the force by which 
it is thrown. But by what law came it to be thrown at 
all? What law brought about the circumstances 
through which the aforesaid combination of material 
laws came into operation on this particular occasion 
and in this particular manner? The law of gravitation, 
no doubt, remains constant and unbroken, whether the 
stone is lying on the ground or moving through the 
air; but neither the law of gravitation nor all the laws 
of matter put together could have brought about this 
particular result without the interposition of the free 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 259 

will of the man who throws the stone. Substitute the 
will of God for the will of man, and the argument, 
which in the above instance is limited to the narrow 
sphere within which man's power can be exercised, be- 
comes applicable to the whole extent of creation, and to 
all the phenomena which it embraces! ' * 

"This argument is as impregnable in its application 
to the question under consideration as to that to which 
Mr. Mausel applies it in the essay from which we quote. 
"We ask our antagonists on what principle it becomes 
impossible for the Creator to move with at least the same 
freedom as his creatures among the laws which he has es- 
tablished? If, for example, the physician can make use 
of natural laws in order to save life, how does it become 
a thing incredible or impossible that the Almighty 
should do the same thing? * * * * 

" It is very possible that Mr. Tyndall and his friend 
would not feel the force of this argument, because it 
assumes the freedom of the will; but it is certain that 
its force can only be evaded by adopting the creed of 
the materialist, * * * by avowing that man's intellect, 
will, and conscience are only modifications of matter, and 
that there is no God independent of, and superior to, 
Nature. 

" How far toward the adoption of this ' creed of the 
cultivated intellect ' these recent assailants of the 
Scriptural doctrine of prayer have actually proceeded 
may be guessed by a consideration of the import of 
some of their utterances. Thus, Mr. Huxley, with 
whose philosophy Mr. Tyndall is understood to be in 



* Aids to Faith, pp. 28-9. 



260 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

accord, has announced that * Matter is a form of 
thought; thought is a property of matter/ that 
• matter and law have devoured spirit and spontaneity; ' 
that God is unknown and unknowable; that the ' phys- 
iology of the future will gradually extend the realm 
of matter and law until it is co-extensive with know- 
ledge, with feeling, and with action; ' that * even those 
manifestations of intellect, of feeling, and of will, 
which we rightly name the higher faculties/ are * only 
transitory changes in the relative positions of the 
parts of the body/ 

" In the light of such statements as these, we may see 
how long prayer would survive the 4 process of purifica- 
tion '■ which Prof. Tyndall has proposed. He is not ac- 
customed, he assures us, to think ' otherwise than sol- 
emnly * of the feeling which prompts prayer; and what 
he desires is not the extinction of prayer, but its ' dis- 
placement.' ■ Physical nature ' is not its domain — he 
is sure of that; and, therefore, good Christian people 
should stop wasting their breath in prayers for the 
sick, and for rain, etc., etc. To what ' practical ob- 
jects/ then, is prayer to be directed, under the 
guidance of the present incumbent of the chair of 
Natural Philosophy in the Koyal Institution, and 
in the School of Mines ? Let the Christian church 
give good heed to the oracular answer: 'In some 
form or other, not yet evident, it may, as alleged, be 
necessary to man's highest culture ! ' 

"We think it already ' evident ' that, however the 
Prof essor may have sought to disentangle himself in his 
second paper from the posture in which his first placed 
him before the Christian public and howe\^er he may 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 261 

beg us to understand that he desires only the 'dis- 
placement ' of prayer, not its extinction, his philoso- 
phy, and that of his friend Huxley, does logically ex- 
tinguish, not only prayer, but every other doctrine of 
religion, inasmuch as it teaches us, in one breath, that 
' Physical nature is not the domain of prayer/ and in 
the next, that c Matter and law have devoured spirit 
and spontaneity/ 

"As long, however, as we decline to acquiesce in the 
opinion, that man is nothing more than a compound of 
carbon and lime and phosphorus and some other 
chemicals; as long as we hold to the belief that, under- 
neath Mr. Huxley's * physical basis ' there are moral 
and spiritual elements of being ' not dreamed of ' in 
his philosophy; as long as we repel, with the deepest 
instincts of our being, that most groundless of all hy- 
potheses, that this magnificent universe exists of itself, 
and is sustained by itself, we shall hold our doctrine of 
the efficacy of the prayer of faith, as received from the 
Scriptures, on impregnable ground, while so far as 
scientific authority is concerned, we will make our ap- 
peal from John Tyndall, the self-confident sceptic, to 
Michael Faraday, the humble Christian, whose name 
shines in the annals of modern science with a lustre 
with which that of his distinguished successor as yet 
cannot compare/' 



XI 
BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 



" The supreme value of Butler will probably be found 
in the future, as it has been in the past, to lie in this ; 
that the works of the Bishop are singularly adapted to 
produce that mental attitude required for treating the 
questions which concern the dealings of God with man." 
"All the theology of the Analogy is derived straight 
from the Holy Scriptures, and ends as well as begins 
with them. , . . His theology was made up, so to 
speak, with raw material drawn straight from the foun- 
tain-head.' 1 '' — Gladstone. 

" One reason why the modern reader is apt to find But- 
ler's Analogy dreary is that he reads it apart from its 
historical environment. If we came to its perusal fresh 
from a course of reading in deistic literature, we should 
thankfully imbibe its teaching as a wholesome tonic after 
dipping into the honey-pots of optimism." — Alex. Bal- 
main Bruce. 



XL 

BUTLEK AND HIS THEOLOGY. 

Joseph Butler was born in 1692 at Wantage, in 
Berkshire. Like Tillotson and Barrow he was the 
son of a shop-keeper, and like the former he was 
nurtured in the bosom of Dissent: but though des- 
tined by his father for the Presbyterian ministry, he 
lost no time, as soon as he came of age, in attaching 
himself to the Established Church. 

The boyhood of great men frequently gives lit- 
tle presage of their subsequent career, as was the 
case with the second of the distinguished Cambridge 
divines just mentioned. That future luminary of 
Greek philology, mathematics and theology, while at 
the Charter House School, was distinguished, report 
says, for nothing save for fighting and general pug- 
nacity. It was otherwise with Butler. While yet a 
lad he €€ made it his business " to prove to himself the 
Being and Attributes of God. His juvenile correspond- 
ence with the then renowned Dr. Samuel Clarke (con- 
ducted anonyomously on his part, the letters being 
conveyed to the postoffice by a zealous friend of 
his) was the result of these youthful cogitations. 
It is remarkable as evincing an acuteness which, in 
the judgment of Sir Jas. Mcintosh, u neither himself 
nor any other ever surpassed ;" but it possesses a still 



266 BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 

greater interest from the evidence it contains that 
even then, before he was twenty-one years of age, he 
felt within him the stirring of the one great purpose of 
his life — heard the voice that called him to gird on 
his armour to defend the Christian Faith. A single 
sentence from his first letter to Dr. Clarke will make 
this clear. He says in apology for opening the cor- 
respondence, "Ever since I thought myself capable of 
such sort of reasoning * * * * I endeavored after a 
demonstrative proof [of the Being and attributes of 
God], not only to satisfiy my own mind but also in 
order to defend the great Truths of Natural Religion 
and those of the Christian Revelation ' * * * * against 
all opposers" 

The transition from metaphysics to lyrics is abrupt, 
and to conceive of Butler's writing verses " to a fair 
cousin," a thing very difficult indeed; yet at some 
period of his life that transition was made, if we may 
trust tradition, and that strange concept was an act- 
uality. We venture therefore in our ignorance of the 
facts to locate the phenomenon at this point in the 
orbit of this great luminary of religious philosophy, as 
the one at which, both from the reason of the thing 
and the analogy of Nature, such a " conjunction " 
would be most likely to occur. Certainly such 
an appeal to Imagination ought to have occurred before 
he pilloried her before the world as " that forward, 
delusive faculty ever obtruding beyond her sphere " 
* * * * the author of all error/ 9 (ch. i, p. 61.) The 
verses have perished and therefore the result of this, 
his single appeal to imagination, must remain a secret. 
Nor have we any information of the issue of the affaire 



BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 267 

ducceur. The/ac£ which remains is that Butler never 
married, but lived a recluse and an ascetic to old age. 
Following his own principle, and reasoning " from the 
known to the unknown " by arguing from " likeness " or 
analogy, we infer that this incident of the Acrostics 
and the cousin terminated in disappointment, that it 
deeply affected him, and that it was this which fixed 
his resolution for asceticism. If so, it may account 
for the cast of sadness which is observable in his 
writings, as it certainly gave opportunity for the 
formation and culture of that habit of deep abstraction, 
without which The Analogy could not be what Sir 
Jas. Mcintosh has pronounced it, " the most original 
and profound work extant in any language on the 
Philosophy of Eeligion. " 

"VVe need not dwell upon the well-known events of 
his life. His appointment at the age of twenty-six 
to the honorable position of Preacher of the Eolls — 
his eight years' service in that capacity — his retire- 
ment to the Country parish of Stanhope where he re- 
mained " buried " for seven years — his reappearance in 
the world in the capacity of confidential companion and 
adviser '(" clerk of the closet,") to that admirable and 
gifted woman Queen Caroline — (his duty required him 
to attend upon the Queen every evening from seven 
to nine) — the publication in his forty-fourth year of his 
great work " The Analogy " — his elevation two years 
subsequently to the See of Bristol (the poorest in Eng- 
land) — his appointment, after the lapse of two years 
of his Episcopate, to be Dean of St. Paul's — his reputed 
refusal of the Primacy because " it was too late for him 
to try to support a falling church" — his translation in 



268 BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 

1750 when he had reached the age of fifty-eight to the 
powerful See of Durham — his famous charge on "Ex- 
ternal Keligion " the year afterwards and the contro- 
versy to which it gave rise — and finally his death in 
1752 at the age of sixty — these are the salient and fa- 
miliar facts of his life. 

We may pause, however, to remark that in perusing 
the life of Butler, one cannot but be struck and capti- 
vated with the admirable harmony between the man 
and his writings. To use his own phrase they were 
" of a piece. " In the man there were all the conditions 
of capability and character and mental bias which 
might be thought requisite to such high philosophic 
argument. And in his writings — notably The Analogy, 
— there are the foot-prints not merely of a master 
mind marching to the execution of a Titanic task, but 
of a lofty moral nature, strong and patient, just and 
generous, self-disciplined, unselfish. If it be true, ac- 
cording to the rule of Quintilian, that the ideal oration 
cannot be produced by any but a good man, much more 
may we affirm that The Analogy could not have been 
the production of a man who had not a great soul. 

This correspondence was twofold. In part it related 
to his mental characteristics — in part to his moral 
nature. It is not without significance that the phil- 
osopher who has drawn such salutary lessons from " the 
ignorance of man/ 9 and who has pointed out so felici- 
tously and so unanswerably that the chief of the difficul- 
ties of Christianity arise from our being in the dark, 
should have been in the habit of walking in his garden 
for hours "in the darkest night which the time of the 
year could afford." His fondness for planning and 



BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. . 269 

building is, too, a circumstance of moment in exhibiting 
the harmony of the man and his writings when we 
remember that the mental characteristic which chiefly 
distinguished him, which gave him his superiority 
over other great thinkers was not his analytic skill 
(though that was remarkable) but his constructive 
ability — that " architectural power " of the mind by 
which he was enabled to combine a vast variety of ma- 
terials into a consistent fabric of argument. 

Of greater interest are those facts in his life which il- 
lustrate the correspondence of his writings with his 
moral nature. We may not here lay stress upon his 
personal appearance — the pale face — the white hair — 
the patriarchal dignity of bearing- — the placid and be- 
nevolent expression that marked his countenance. But 
we cannot but mark with delight how his principles 
are mirrored in his life. Does he insist that it be- 
comes creatures such as we are to deport ourselves 
with humility and modesty in our enquiries touching 
the constitution of the universe and God's government 
of it? He himself seems to have been from boyhood 
as much distinguished by modesty and candor as he 
was by great and commanding talents. Nor did the 
smiles of Koyalty, or the applause of the learned, or 
the elevation of office corrupt this admirable simplicity 
of heart. Did he show that human life was designed 
to be a state of discipline? From the beginning to the 
close of life he disciplined himself with unsparing 
rigor. 

Whether in his rural parish of Stanhope, diligently 
and faithfully ministering to his flock, or in the Epis- 
copate at Bristol or Durham, performing acts of kindness 



270 BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 

and condescension to the poorer clergy, he was ever the 
same simple, unpretending man, frugal in his fare, 
self denying in his habits and given to good works. 

He once apologized to an invited guest for the 
plainness of his repast (it consisted of a joint of meat 
and a pudding) saying that he had long been disgusted 
with the fashionable expense of time and money in en- 
tertainments and was determined it should receive 
no countenance from his example." His principle 
that "nature shows that we are designed to help 
others as well as ourselves" was nobly illustrated by 
his activity in connection with public charities, as well 
as by his great liberality. His noble vindication of hu- 
man nature against Hobbes and the disciples of the 
selfish philosophy could scarcely be more nobly illus- 
trated than by his own example. Benevolence and a 
self -forgetting devotion to the interests of others were 
part of the man. Horace Walpole said that Butler 
" was wafted to the See of Durham on a cloud of Meta- 
physics," but it would have been more just to say that 
he attained his Episcopal eminence by slow steps, by 
the patient thought and godly life of thirty years, — 
while in youth he pondered the great problem of The- 
ism, while he wrought out those monuments of phil- 
osophical investigation, euphemistically called "Ser- 
mons," preached at the Eolls, while, as "Kector But- 
ler," he trotted round his country parish on his black 
pony during eight years of faithful pastoral duty. 

In a word as his philosophy has been characterized, 
so we may characterize his life and say that " it was 
everywhere, compassionate, magnanimous, philanthrop- 
ic" It deserves to be mentioned that his philan- 



BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 271 

thropy, running far ahead of the average of his time, 
went out to foreign shores and to men of other tongues. 
In his sermon before the Society for the Propagation 
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, he insists upon the 
idea, which is the great seminal principle of Missions, 
that Christianity is a trust, deposited ivith us in be- 
half of others, in behalf of mankind — ; and he goes on 
to say that the obligation to communicate this gospel 
stops not short of sending it not merely to the settlers 
in foreign lands, but to the natives as well, to which 
he adds, by way of encouragement, a rehearsal of the 
promise that the Everlasting Gospel shall be preached 
to every nation and the kingdoms of this world shall 
become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. 

This was in 1738 when Protestant Missions were as 
yet in their infancy — were indeed scarcely born into 
the world. In this connection we may add that Butler 
was deeply interested in the progress of the Church in 
the American Colonies, and bent the energies of his in- 
tellect to the task of devising a plan for its consoli- 
dation and extension. He drew it up with his own 
hand, and it is said to have been characterized by his 
accustomed moderation and liberality ; but farther 
than this we know nothing of it. Had it been carried 
into effect, we may feel sure that America would not 
have been left without more efficient Episcopal supervi- 
sion than could be given by the Bishop of London from 
across the ocean, nor would the Colonies have become 
as they did the "Botany Bay" of English clergymen. 

In attempting to give a brief view of some phases of 
the religious philosophy of Butler, we must first glance 



272 BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 

for a moment at the complexion of the times in 
which he lived. 

The progress of thought is ruled by a law of action 
and reaction. Thus, to go no farther back, in the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries when the revival of let- 
ters took place, and Europe awoke from the long sleep 
of the middle ages, there was a reaction from the puer- 
ilities and absurdities of scholasticism. But by that 
pendulum, principle which is one of the weaknesses of the 
human understanding, men were not content with 
cutting off the excrescences which had fastened them- 
selves upon theology, but by and by proceeded to 
reject Christianity itself. 

A similar awakening in England after the great wars 
of the seventeenth century was followed by a somewhat 
similar reaction, this time against the scholasticism 
of Puritan theology. And as in the former case, so 
now, men went on to abandon Christianity itself. 
Thought, set free from swaddling bands, overleaped the 
ancient bounds of its habitation, became intoxicated 
with its freedom and rebelled against all authority. 

"Christianity was regarded," says Mr. Hunt, " as ob- 
solete by men of the world, and it had become the jest 
of the illiterate and the profane. * # * * To be an unbe- 
liever, or as the popular term was, a ( f reethinker/ 
was the fashionable mode of acquiring on easy terms a 
reputation for superior capacity * * * # Swift says that 
scarcely more than two or three persons, either in the 
army or navy, believed in religion, and that of people 
of quality, great numbers openly avowed their disbelief 
in all revelation." * 

* "History of Religious Thought in England," by John 
Hunt, 1870. 



BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 273 

Such was the age in which Butler appeared on the 
stage of action. He perceived its true character; he 
saw its great need; he scanned the efforts of his prede- 
cessors; he sifted the philosophy of the strong, and in 
some cases, earnest thinkers who had attacked either 
Christianity itself or the positions of some of its de- 
fenders. He weighed the arguments of the host of 
apologists and evidence-writers who had sprung to 
arms in defense of the Christian religion. Long and 
earnestly he pondered the great problem, and at 
length he broke silence by the publication of The Anal- 
ogy. " As you read it," says Principal Shairp, "you 
seem to hear the voice of a great and earnest thinker 
crying in the wilderness, and pleading with a suffering 
generation to believe that there is a deeper moral ten- 
dency in things than at first sight appears." * 

Butler saw that the chief obstacle in the way of the 
reception of Christianity in his day was that men had 
come to assume that it was unreasonable — that it was 
"not so much as a subject of inquiry," but was "now 
at length discovered to be fictitious," and that this was a 
point supposed to be "taken for granted among people 
of discernment." Hence the object which he proposed 
in The Analogy was not to construct " an irrefragable 
proof " of Christianity, as his epitaph at Bristol Cathe- 
dral has it, but to remove the prejudice against its rea- 
sonableness, and thus to prepare the way for a candid 
examination of the positive evidence in its favor. 
This he undertook to do by the development of a 
germ found in a sentence of Origen, whose answer to 



* " Culture and Religion,' ' p. 48. 



274 BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 

Celsus, by the way, bears singular features of resem- 
blance to Butler's argument against the Deists of the 
eighteenth century. The Greek father reminded his 
Pagan adversaries that " he who believes the Scriptures 
to have proceeded from Him who is the author of na- 
ture may well expect to find the same sort of difficul- 
ties in it as are found in the constitution of nature." 

It was the application of a philosophical principle 
older than Origen, — that the universe is to be regarded 
as a whole. God is One — the universe is one — its laws 
are one. The seen and the unseen, the material and 
the spiritual, the natural and the supernatnal, are parts 
of one whole. Hence the existence of similar difficulties 
in Christianity to those which are found in the consti- 
tution of nature, is not only not strange, but is a thing 
to be expected, and furnishes a presumption in favor of 
its truth. 

Turning from this negative application of his princi- 
ple, Butler went on to trace the harmony of the con- 
stitution of nature with the truths of Eevelation, argu- 
ing from this the probability — in some instances 
amounting to a moral certainty — of the two having one 
author. This great principle was for him the solvent of 
most of the difficulties which, he pretended not to 
deny, the Christian religion presented. Take, for exam- 
ple, the problem of the supernatural. Butler suggests 
that the whole conception of the supernatural may only 
arise out of our limited range of vision. The:natural and 
supernatural, as we call them, may not be two spheres, 
but one ; or may be embraced in one higher sphere. 
That they appear different may only be because we see 
in part and know in part. Miracles may be entirely 
natural to some other order of beings than ours. 



BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 275 

They may be as much under the dominion of law as 
comets and meteors are now known to be, though they 
seem to us as much eccentricities in the government of 
God as those once seemed in the natural order. To 
use his own language: " There maybe beings in the 
universe whose capabilities, etc., may be so extensive 
as that the whole Christian dispensation may to them 
appear natural/ 9 He did not profess, or attempt, to 
prove this, but only to suggest it as reasonable. 

Butler's view of the relation of reason to Christianity 
is of course the crucial test both of his philosophy and 
his theology, and here he stands in a close relation to 
the Cambridge Platonists of the preceding century, who 
in tracing the connection between the doctrines of Chris- 
tianity and the nature and reason of man, may almost 
be said to have furnished the germ of The Analogy. His 
view of the nature of morality, as founded not in posi- 
tive precept, as Hobbes would have it, but in an eternal 
and immutable principle, accorded with theirs, as it did 
also with that of Lord Herbert. Indeed there is much 
in common between some of the principles of Butler 
and those of the better class of Deists who preceded 
him, — just so much as there was of truth in their one- 
sided system. Butler believes as strongly in the real- 
ity of the light of nature as Toland or Shaftesbury, 
but he did not like them forget that it was not always 
a clear light or the only one, and that there might be 
a greater light unto which men would do well to take 
heed. He insisted with Locke and Sherlock that Chris- 
tianity was reasonable, but he did not make the mistake 
they did of attempting to make reason the measure as 
well as the judge of Revelation, thus eliminating the 



276 BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 

mysterious altogether from the system. Certainly he be- 
lieved that God's first revelation is in the soul of man, 
in the conceptions written there of justice and truth 
and goodness and all moral attributes, which he be- 
lieved to be the shadows of the attributes of God pro- 
jected upon the tables of the human heart. Bishop 
Peter Browne, whom we may call the forerunner of Dean 
Mansel, has taught a philosophy which upon these 
points practically stultifies reason and annihilates the 
power of thinking. But Butler was no disciple of his. 
He was a learner in the school of the great Apostle of the 
Gentiles who teaches us that the Law of God is written 
in the hearts of even the heathen so that they " having 
not the law are a law unto themselves "; and who had 
such confidence in the adaptation of the light of the 
gospel to the mind of man that he confidently expected 
by simply manifesting the truth to " commend himself 
to every man's conscience. " 

Let us hear his own words, that there be no mistake. 
" I express myself with caution, lest I should be mis- 
taken to vilify Reason; which is indeed the only faculty 
we have wherewith to judge concerning anything, even 
Revelation itself " (Analogy, p. 188.) Again in the con- 
clusion of The Analogy, he says concerning the whole of 
his great argument that " it is urged. * # * * with 
great caution of not vilifing the faculty of Reason, which 
is the candle of the Lord within us." (Id. 289). How 
far is this from the philosophy which suggests that moral 
attributes in God are generically, or at least characteris- 
tically, different from moral attributes in man. So 
much in general for his view of Reason. As to Revela- 
tion he thus speaks: " God has, by Revelation, instructed 



BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 277 

men in things concerning his government which they 
could not otherwise have known; and reminded them of 
things which they might otherwise know; and attested 
the whole by miracles." (p. 287)» Besides the scheme 
of Natural Eeligion, which Christianity republishes, it 
" contains an account of a dispensation of things not 
discoverable by Eeason, in consequence of which several 
positive precepts are enjoined us" (p. 167); or, as he 
elsewhere expresses it, " a particular dispensation of 
Providence, carried on by His Son and Spirit, for the 
recovery and salvation of mankind, who are represented 
in Scripture to be in a state of ruin." The relation of 
Eeason to Eevelation is thus stated: "Eeason can, 
and it ought to judge, not only of the meaning but also 
of the morality and the evidence of Eevelation — first, 
it is the province of Eeason to judge of the morality 
of the Scriptures; i. e., not whether it contains things 
different from what we should have expected from a wise, 
just and good Being; * * * * but whether it contains 
things plainly contradictory to wisdom, justice or 
goodness; to -what the light of Nature teaches us of 
God," (p. 198.) Again he says, " Let Eeason be kept to; 
and if any part of the Scripture account of the Ee- 
demption of the world can be shown to be really con- 
trary to it, let the Scripture in God's name be given 
up," (p. 224.) 

Butler's application of these principles has been 
sharply criticised by Mr. Hunt. It is asserted that 
he "plainly departs from the whole system of his own 
moral teaching and sets up a defence of precepts which 
cannot be defended." * The point under review is 

* History of Religious Thought, Yol. III., page, 393. 



278 BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 

his treatment of the moral difficulties of the Scriptures, 
and it is very positively affirmed by the critic that the 
difficulty presented by the Deists was one which Butler 
" could never get over." His argument, moreover, 
from analogy on this point is pronounced " only an en- 
lightening of darkness by darkness more profound/' 

But we venture to think that Mr. Hunt has quite 
misapprehended and misrepresented Butler's meaning. 
His argument is thus stated. " Precepts in the 
Scripture which seem to be immoral would be found, 
it is supposed, not to be immoral if we knew the 
whole of the reasons why they are commanded;" upon 
which the following comment is made: "If they are 
immoral, as we understand immorality, and yet not 
immoral, it is useless to speak of our having a moral 
sense." 

We cannot find this reasoning in Butler. He does 
not affirm that the precepts in question "seem to le 
immoral" much less that they " are immoral as we 
understand immorality " What he does say is that the 
actions commanded "would be immoral " were it not 
for the divine precept, which he thinks changes the 
whole nature of the case. This indeed would not be 
true if the precepts were contrary to " immutable mor- 
ality" But this he argues is not so. Whether Butler 
is right or no, it is certain that his argument has been 
mis-stated by the writer referred to. But the integrity 
of his argument is shown by the analogous case of the 
taking of human life in obedience to the precept or 
decree of the State, as by a soldier in battle, or by an 
executioner. Here is an act which (not being in itself 
contrary to immutable morality) has its whole char- 



BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 279 

acter changed by a precept. It is moreover an analogy 
precisely in point. 

So clear was this to the mind of Butler that he de- 
clares unequivocally that " objections against Chriss 
tianity, as distinguished from objections against it- 
evidence, are frivolous " (p. 200) : that " there are no 
objections against its morality " (p. 192) : and that it is 
weak to urge that the divine precepts enjoining the 
taking of the life and property of certain persons were 
immoral/' (p. 199). 

That Calvinists should have attempted to justify 
their system by the argument of Butler, and that by 
it John Henry Newman should have defended Mariol- 
atry and Transubstantiation does not invalidate its 
justness or its force. Even if they have not misused 
his argument, it should be remembered that the ques- 
tion A of interpretation is prior to the application of 
Butler's philosophy. 

The theology of Calvin and the dogmas of the church 
of Rome are first of all to be submitted to the test of 
Exegesis. If they cannot stand this test, it is illogical 
to try to justify them by the philosophy of Butler in the 
instance alluded to, where the whole force of his de- 
duction depends upon the premise that there is revealed 
a distinct command from God. 

The argument of The Analogy appears then to be as 
solid as its principles are just, and its author remains 
as accurate in his reasoning as he was firm in his faith 
No higher praise could be awarded him and perhaps 
no juster description could be given of him, than to 
say, as has been said, that he was " the man who con- 
cluded a happy alliance between Faith Philoso- 



280 BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 

phy." None more justly interpreted or more loyally 
obeyed the ancient precept "Reverence thyself" But 
though he magnified, he did not deify human Reason; 
though he vindicated man's capacity to know God and 
to find his attributes mirrored, however faintly, in his 
own breast, yet he did not forget that man knows only 
" in part ; " that here " in this little scene of human 
life" he thinks and speaks and understands, though 
truly, yet as a child; he sees the things of God, though 
really, yet "through a glass, darkly." 

The " ignorance of man " forms the subject of one 
of his profoundest sermons ; and the idea in various 
forms is continually recurring in The Analogy : — Our 
faculties are very imperfect at best : we are not com- 
petent judges of the divine conduct: so far is man in 
the dark concerning what would have been necessary 
to his salvation prior to Eevelation that (p. 214) 
" Darkness " and " The light of Nature " are convert- 
ible terms in describing his condition : Christianity is 
reasonable, in the sense of not contradicting immutable 
morality; but it is a scheme imperfectly comprehended, 
of which we see but one side and that only dimly. 

Was Butler's then a rational theology ? If by this 
we mean a theology which recognizes nothing too 
deep to be fathomed, too wide to be measured, too 
high to be attained by Eeason; — which adopts the 
motto of Protagoras of old, " Man the measure of all 
things" and therefore as Shairp says makes his feel- 
ings and intuitions and needs "The Centre" and 
"by these proceeds to measure the nature of God, his 
dealings with man, his revelation of Himself," — 
then Butler's Theology was not rational. If again by a 



BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 281 

rational theology be meant a logical system, complete 
in all its parts, shorn of all that is mysterious or inex- 
plicable, from which all mists have been cleared away, 
and which presents itself to the eye of man, " totus, 
teres, atque rotundus : w — such was not the theology of 
Butler. And yet in the truest, noblest sense it was 
rational, — because it recognized in Eeason a true Keve- 
lation of God to the soul; conferred upon it judicial 
functions in testing the meaning, the evidence, and the 
morality of any supposed supernatural Eevelation: 
and claimed its ultimate and complete harmony with 
every part of the scheme both of Providence and Grace. 

If we proceed to inquire in detail what were the 
salient points in his theology, we shall have to bear 
in mind that The Analogy conducts us only to the 
threshold of his opinions. We get here perhaps only 
the germ of his particular views. Yet we shall find 
these in most instances sufficiently developed to make 
it clear where he stood. 

His Theism was rational. He held the existence of 
God — i. e., "an intelligent Author and Governor of the 
World " — to be a truth which had " been proved often 
with accumulated evidence," (Introduction) and de- 
clares that he attached great importance to the evidence 
from design (p. 287). His objections to Dr. Clarke's 
Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God he 
subsequently retracted. In his conceptions of the Deity 
he appears not to have been afraid of the charge of An- 
thropomorphism (Sermons, pp. 158-60) and like Niebuhr 
could not be satisfied with " a metaphysical God" but 
found rest only in " the God of the Bible who is heart to 
heart" So emphatic were his expressions in his ser- 



282 BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 

mons on the Love of God that he was charged, on ac- 
count of them, with enthusiasm. * 

Concerning human depravity his position is by no 
means equivocal. " The earth, our habitation, has the 
appearance of being a ruin/' (p. 216). " There are 
natural appearances of our being in a state of deg- 
radation/' " The best have great wrongnesses in 
them which they complain of," (p. 216). " Human na- 
ture/' in his view, " is fallen from its original rectitude, 
and in consequence of this, degraded from primitive 
happiness," (p. 291). And that this should be con- 
nected with the fall of our first parents he considers 
perfectly agreeable to reason. 

From this state of ruin, Christianity was appointed 
to deliver man — Christ is a Mediator in " a high, em- 
inent, and peculiar sense." This mediation is so far 
necessary that there is no reason to believe, but from 
the analogy of Nature every reason to disbelieve, 
that repentance and amendment would be sufficient to 
deliver man from the punishment which his sins 
deserve (p. 213). The interposition of Christ prevented 
that punishment from actually following, which accord- 
ing to the general laws of Divine Government, must 
have followed the sins of the world, had it not been 
for such interposition. As to the atonement he does 
not find that scripture has explained "how and in 
what particular way" the Sacrifice of Christ had 
the efficacy there ascribed to it ; this matter of the 
satisfaction of Christ is left mysterious ; somewhat in 

* Mr. Gladstone remarks that some critics have alleged that 
he fails to treat of religion " in a manner duly evangelical." 
Studies, subsidiary to the Works of Bishop Butler, p. 111. 



BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 283 

it remains unrevealed. Yet he is clear that Christ has 
put the world " into a capacity of salvation, by what 
he did and suffered for them : " " into a capacity of es- 
caping future punishment and obtaining future hap- 
piness " (p. 220). Equally clear is he in asserting the 
office of Christ as High Priest, offering a propitiatory 
sacrifice for the sins of the world. " The Levitical 
priesthood was a shadow of the priesthood of Christ 
in like manner as the tabernacle made by Moses 
was according to that showed him in the Mount. 
The Priesthood of Christ and the Tabernacle in 
the Mount were the originals : of the former of which 
the Levitical Priesthood was a type, and of the latter, 
the tabernacle made by Moses was a copy. The Doc- 
trine of this Epistle (Hebs.) then plainly is " that the 
legal sacrifices were allusions to the great and final atone- 
ment to he made hy the blood of Christ : and not that 
this was an illusion to those" (p. 217). To object to 
the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ on the ground that 
"it represents God as indifferent whether he punished 
the innocent or the guilty " (p. 221). Butler consid- 
ers unreasonable because it " holds with equal force " 
against God's whole original Constitution of Nature, 
and the whole daily course of Divine Providence in the 
government of the world — (p. 221), and suggests to 
the objector "that during the progress, and for aught he 
knew, in order to the completion of this moral scheme, 
vicarious punishment mag be fit, and absolutely 
necessary (p. 222). He adds that " the tendency " of 
the doctrine of the atonement "to vindicate the au- 
thority of God's Laws and to deter his creatures from 
sin " is an argument in its favor which " has never yet 



284 BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 

been answered, and is I think plainly unanswerable," 
"though," he adds, "lam far from thinking it an 
account of the whole of the case " (p. 223). 

As to Butler's view of Faith, we are much in the dark, 
— save the general remark that we must believe in Christ 
" not in a speculative but a practical sense " (p. 214). 
And in one of his sermons he says : " Keligion, as it 
stood under the Old Testament, is perpetually styled 
the fear of God : under the New, Faith in Christ. 
But * * * * this faith in Christ does not signify liter- 
ally believing in Him in the sense that word is used in 
common language, but becoming his real disciples, in 
consequence of such belief " (p. 228). 

We may here give an anecdote of his last moments: 
" When Bishop Butler lay on his deathbed, he called 
for his chaplain, and said, ' Though I have endeav- 
ored to avoid sin, and to please God to the utmost of 
my power ; yet from the consciousness of perpetual in- 
firmities, I am still afraid to die.' ' My Lord/ said the 
Chaplain, ' you have forgotten that Jesus Christ is a 
Saviour.' 'True,' was the answer, ' but how shall I 
know that He is a Saviour for me ? ' 'My Lord, it is 
written, "Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise 
cast out." ' True,' said the Bishop, ' and I am surprised 
that though I have read that Scripture a thousand times 
over I never felt its virtue till this moment. And now 
I die happy/" 

It was this assurance of acceptance simply in relying 
on the promise of an all-sufficient Redeemer, which the 
Bishop had objected to in Mr. Wesley's doctrine of justi- 
fication by faith. But if it is a good doctrine to die by; 
it is no less worth to live by also. In a conversation with 



BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 285 

Wesley he said, in reply to the assertion that we are 
justified by faith only, " our faith itself is a good work : 
it is a virtuous temper of mind." Wesley objected to 
this and a discussion followed, characterized by some 
warmth on the Bishop's part. But some twenty or 
thirty years afterwards Wesley gave a statement of his 
views of the relation of justification and works, the 
latter a condition of the former, which would probably 
have met the views of Butler. 

Concerning a Future Life, Butler's doctrine was that 
the present life was marts probation, and his only pro- 
bation, for that. He gives no encouragement to the no- 
tion of repentance and restoration in a future state. 
This life affords man his opportunity for moral disci- 
pline and improvement — and the only one, so far as we 
know. He illustrates this from analogy thus : " There 
is a certain bound to imprudence and misbehaviour, 
which being transgressed, there remains no place for 
repentance in the natural course of things." After the 
many warnings which men receive " have been long des- 
pised, scorned, ridiculed ; after the chief bad (temporal) 
consequences of their follies have been delayed for a 
great while ; at length they break in irresistibly, like an 
armed force ; repentance is too late to relieve, and can 
serve only to aggravate their distress ; and poverty and 
sickness, remorse and anguish, infamy and death, — 
the effects of their own doings — overwhelm them be- 
yond the possibility of remedy or escape/' (p. 82). All 
this, he adds, is " analogous to what religion teaches us 
concerning the future punishment of the wicked." 

He considers the various objections against this doc- 
trine — "that the frailty, of our nature and external 



286 BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 

temptation almost annihilate the guilt of human vices" 
— that men are under necessity to act as they do — 
"that the will of an Infinite Being cannot be contra- 
dicted "— " that He must be incapable of offence and 
provocation/' But all these he easily sweeps away by 
the besom of analogy. 

Butler has been charged with defective teaching on 
the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. There is little said in 
his writings on this subject, it is true, and it has been 
observed that in enumerating the evidences of Chris- 
tianity, he makes no mention of "the witness of the 
Spirit." But the nature of his work, and the fact that 
it was addressed chiefly to the Deists, to whom the wit- 
ness of the Spirit would be an unintelligible argument, 
sufficiently account for both these facts. However 
what he does say on the subject is by no means unsatis- 
factory. The "particular dispensation " for "the 
recovery and salvation of mankind " is carried on " by 
the Son and Spirit" Baptism reveals " obligations of 
duty, unknown before, to the * * * * Holy Ghost " 
The Holy Ghost is " our guide and sanctifier." The 
Spirit has his proper office in that great dispensation of 
Providence, the redemption of the world. And to Him 
as one of the Divine Persons reverence, honor, love, 
trust, gratitude, fear, hope, are due (pp. 173, 174). 
The mission of the Holy Ghost is " miraculous" (p. 
202). Christ exercises an invisible government over the 
Church by his Spirit (p. 219). Mankind, being cor- 
rupted and depraved, " the assistance of God's Spirit is 
necessary to renew their nature/' all which is implied 
in the express, though figurative, declaration, "Ex- 
cept a man be born of the Spirit, he cannot enter into 
the kingdom of God » (p. 175). 



BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 287 

Touching the question of Inspiration, Butler held 
a middle ground. On the one hand he rejected the 
verbal theory, since he admitted the possibility of 
" mistakes of transcribers," and other real or seeming 
mistakes "not easy to be particularly accounted for." 
But on the other hand he firmly held that there is 
"nothing (in the way of error) in any wise, sufficient 
to discredit the general narrative " (p. 267). The na- 
ture of the inspiration imparted to the sacred writers 
was, in his view, distinguished by broad lines from that 
which is bestowed upon Christian men ordinarily. 
They were "miraculously qualified for communicat- 
ing the knowledge given " them by revelation. Ac- 
cordingly, he affirms that "neither obscurity, nor seem- 
ing inaccuracy of style, nor various readings, nor early 
disputes about the authors of particular parts ; nor any 
other things of the like sort, though they had been 
much more considerable in degree than they are, could 
overthrow the authority of the Scripture " (p. 192). 

Moreover on the interpretation of Scripture his posi- 
tion is not doubtful. The Bible is not in his opinion 
to be interpreted or read as any other book. " There 
are several ways of arguing which though just with re- 
gard to other writings, are not applicable to Scripture; " 
and the reason of this difference is that in Scripture we 
are not competent judges, as we are in common books, 
of the method of expression proper to convey the mean- 
ing intended (p. 192). The province of Scripture is not 
doubtful. It is the complete and only rule of faith 
concerning revealed doctrines. It is to the theologian 
what the natural world is to the scientist, and is to be 
studied with similar careful reflection and induction. 



288 BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 

In the province of Christian evidences, Butler regards 
miracles and prophecy as the seal of Kevelation. He 
distinctly avers that there is no Christianity apart from 
the supernatural. If there is "no proof of miracles 
originally wrought in attestation " of the Christian re- 
ligion; " nor any of prophecy, that is of events foretold, 
which human sagacity could not foresee/' then is Reve- 
lation overturned/' (p. 192). Though it could be shown 
" that the prophets thought of some other events, in 
such and such predictions ; or that such and such proph- 
ecies are capable of being applied to other events than 
those to which Christians apply them " — this, he says, 
' ( would not confute or destroy the force of the argument 
from prophecy, even with regard to those very in- 
stances " — and his reason is that u to say that the Scrip- 
tures can have no other or further meaning than those 
persons thought * * * * who wrote * * * * them, is 
evidently saying that those persons were the original, 
sole, and proper authors of these books " (pp. 256-7). 
" Hence maybe seen to how little purpose those persons 
busy themselves who endeavor to prove that the 
prophetic history is applicable to events of the age in 
which it was written, or of ages before it " (p. 258). 
He doubtless had Collins in mind in these words. 
They are equally applicable to a class of writers in our 
own day who repeat his arguments. 

In his remarks upon the particular evidence for 
Christianity Butler considers the Epistles of St. Paul by 
themselves, and remarks "that they afford a proof of 
Christianity detached from all others * * * * and also 
a proof of a nature and kind peculiar to itself/' Now 
this is precisely the line adopted by some of the most 



BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 289 

accomplished writers in evidence to-day, in Germany 
and elsewhere. Uhlhorn, e. g., begins with the first five 
Epistles of St. Paul, because the critics universally 
concede their genuineness; and upon them alone he 
rears the whole fabric of Christianity. 

Butler's Ecclesiastical position may be gathered with- 
out hesitation and without uncertainty from a brief pas- 
sage in The Analogy. Christ " founded a Church, to be 
to mankind a standing Memorial of Keligion, an invita- 
tion to it, which he promised to be with always even 
to the end." Of this Church, all persons scattered over 
the world, who live in obedience to his Laws, are members. 
This broad Catholic view of the nature of the Church 
is in beautiful harmony with his philosophy, with his 
theology and with his life. It establishes his claim to be 
the successor of the Eeformers of the sixteenth cen- 
tury and of the Cambridge School of the seventeenth, 
of whom Archbishop Tillotson was the leader; it makes 
him the coadjutor of Bishop Hoadley in reviving the 
doctrine of the Invisible Church; it shows him to be 
the forerunner of our own Bishop White and of English- 
men of this century like Whately and Myers.* 

He was indeed charged with popery: to which it is 
sufficient to reply that, had the charge not been stran- 
gled at its birth by Archbishop Seeker, his own writings 



* It seems inconsistent with this view of his ecclesiastical 
opinion to find him frowning upon the Methodists, and even 
inhibiting Wesley from preaching in his Diocese. Here it is 
true his discernment failed him, but we must remember that 
both Wesley and Whitefield had gone so far in claiming the 
immediate guidance of the Holy Ghost, that there was perhaps 
real ground for alarm. 



290 BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 

furnish a refutation. In The Analogy he broadly inti- 
mates that had God's revelation not been committed 
to writing but left to be handed down orally, it would 
necessarily have become corrupted by verbal tradition, 
and at length sunk under it. And in the year 1747, 
only^three years before his death, he described popery, as 
" that great corruption of Christianity, which is ever 
hard at work to bring us again under its yoke." He 
saw in it one hundred and twenty years before the 
Council of 1870, the germs of the dogma of Infallibility. 
"It is," said he, "manifest open usurpation of all 
human and divine authority." 

On the whole both the principles and the method of 
Butler's religious philosophy are applicable to the prob- 
lems of our time no less than to those of his day; for, 
amid wide differences, there is much real resemblance 
between the early part of the last century and the 
close of our own. The eighteenth century has been 
characterized by a writer already quoted in this Essay 
as " a sifting, active-minded age, analyzing all things 
and believing in nothing which it could not analyze; 
an age wholly overmastered by the understanding, 
judging according to sense." * These terms are 
equally applicable to our own day. The sense-philoso- 
phy against which Butler contended — the Deism — the 
spirit which laughs at mystery and scorns the super- 
natural — have each their counterpart in our time. 
Phenomenalism — materialism — all those theories of 
culture which either eliminate or subordinate Keli- 



Sliairp, Culture and Religion, p. 48. 



BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 291 

gion — that whole tendency which would " make modern 
thought and feeling the fixed standard, and pare 
down the words of Christ and His Apostles to fit 
into this " — these and other kindred forms of error 
confront us, led by men who are very Sons of Anak in 
stature. In the field of religious philosophy we can- 
not meet them better than by arming ourselves with 
arrows from the quiver of the great Defender of the 
faith whose writings we have now been engaged in con- 
sidering. 

Since the foregoing essay was written, Mr. Gladstone's 
superb edition of the works of Bishop Butler has issued 
from the Clarenden Press, and with it that illustrious 
man gave to the world his " Studies, Subsidiary to the 
Works of Bishop Butler." These publications at the 
close of the nineteenth century by one who has played 
so great apart both in the politics and the literature of 
the age, supply a fresh instance of the perennial in- 
terest and value of the works of the great Bishop of 
Durham of whose life and religious philosophy we have 
endeavored to give some account above. The opin- 
ion we have ventured to express of the application 
which the Christian apologist may make of the prin- 
ciples of Butler's religious philosophy to the de- 
fense of the Faith at the close of our century seems 
fully justified by these luminous and powerful papers 
of Mr. Gladstone. He deals in his masterly way with 
the allegation that the argument of his author is "su- 
perannuated," and contends that the highest import- 
ance of his works, and of The Analogy in particular, is to 
be found " not in his argument, but in his method," 
which, he maintains, is so comprehensive as to em- 



292 BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 

brace every question belonging to the relations be- 
tween the Deity and man " (p. 13). In the opinion of 
this past-master in the art of dialectics the reasonings 
of The Analogy are applicable not only as against the 
Deism of Butler's day, which is indeed dead and 
buried, but also as against " the several opposing sys- 
tems which (now) seek to abolish the idea of a per- 
sonal and righteous Governor of the universe " (p. 14). 
It is no small confirmation of Mr. Gladstone's con- 
tention on this point that that profound and philosoph- 
ical theologian, Frederick Denison Maurice, whose 
thought has been one of the formative influences of 
the now dying age, was so close a student of Butler, 
and " had so drunk in his fundamental conceptions that 
it might almost appear that he has drawn the very 
blood of Butler into his own veins " (p. 73). 

With the critics who do not merely regard Butler's 
work as out of date, and his arguments as inapplicable 
to present-day problems, but pass strictures, more or 
less severe, upon the character and tendency of his 
writings, Mr. Gladstone deals in a masterly chapter. 
After pointing out that until more than half of the 
nineteenth century had passed away, Butler had no cen- 
sors worthy of notice, he takes up one by one, and an- 
swers — conclusively as appears to us — his principal 
critics : Dr. Martineau, who held that his famous mas- 
terpiece, The Analogy, was in reality an argument 
against Natural Eeligion ; Miss Hennell, who wrote a 
powerful essay on the skeptical tendency of that great 
work ; Mr. Bagehot, who maintained that its argument 
may be used to support Mohammedanism no less than 
Christianity ; Mr. Leslie Stephens, who charges that it 



BUTLER AND BIS THEOLOGY. 293 

leads to Atheism, and Mr. Matthew Arnold, who finds 
some of its arguments "fanciful" and "fantastic," 
and is of opinion that in some respects it " contravenes 
the clear voice of our religion." We cannot refrain, 
in concluding, from calling the reader's attention to 
the weighty words with which he concludes his critique 
upon the critics : 

"Speaking for myself, after careful endeavors to weigh 
each and all of the objections which they have taken, I confess 
to a sense of satisfaction upon finding that, after a century and 
a half, the latter portion of the time distinguished by an un- 
usual activity of the questioning spirit, no more formidable 
grounds of exception should have been discovered. The cata- 
pult has beaten on the walls of the fortress ; it has stood the 
shock. The tempest has roared around the stately tree, and 
scarcely a leaf or twig has fallen to the ground. My confi- 
dence is strengthened not only in the permanence of Butler's 
fame, but much more in the permanence and abundance of the 
services he has yet to render to his country, to its kindred and 
perhaps to Christendom, as a classic of thought in the greatest 
of all its domains, the domain of religious philosophy." — 
Studies, p. 72. 



XII. 
LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 



" Luther* s birthplace was Eisleben in Saxony* * * * 
There was born here, once more, a Mighty Man, whose 
light was to flame as the beacon over long centuries and 
epochs of the world : the whole world and its history were 
waiting for this man. It is strange, it is great * * * * 
I will call this Luther a true Great Man ; great in intel- 
lect, in courage, affection and integrity ; one of our most 
lovable and precious men. Great, not as a hewn ob- 
elisk, but as an Alpine mountain,— so simple, honest, 
spontaneous, not setting up to be great at all! * * * * Ah 
yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and wide into the 
heavens ; yet in the clefts of it fountains, green beautiful 
valleys with flowers! A right Spiritual Hero and 
Prophet ; once more, a true son of Nature and Fact, for 
whom these Centuries, and many that are to come yet, 
will be thankful to Heaven." — Thomas Carlyle. 

" The Church of England rests upon the right and duty 
of private judgment which requires that men shall con- 
scientiously accept her teaching. It is based upon the 
supposition that men shall think for themselves." — 
Archbishop Temple, Speech in the House of Lords, July 
16, 1900. 

" These were the great problems which occupied the 
whole soul of Luther, and which were at once character- 
istic of the revolution which he led and of the nations 
who were included in it. And he solved the problem by 
maintaining that there was such a spiritual principle of 
freedom, the essence of all good works, in the act of faith, 
— which meant, with him, the personal apprehension of 
Christ's living presence with the heart, and the entire 
surrender to His power. This one act included all be- 
lief, all hope, and all the holiness within the reach of 
man on earth. It contained the whole Christian life in 
germ." — R H. Hutton. 



XII. 

LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. * 

The story of Luther and the Reformation affords a 
striking illustration of the words of St. Paul, " God 
hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound 
the wise ; and God hath chosen the weak things of the 
world to confound the things which are mighty ; and 
base things of the world, and things which are despised, 
hath God chosen, yea and things which are not, to 
bring to nought things that are ; that no flesh should 
glory in His presence." 

Luther belongs to no sect or denomination of Chris- 
tians, but to Christendom itself ; to no nationality, 
but to mankind. The work God sent him to do was not 
for Europe or Germany, much less for the Lutheran de- 
nomination, but for the world. We speak of Mont 
Blanc as one of the Swiss mountains, but the geo- 
grapher and the geologist must regard it as belonging 
rather to the Continent of Europe. 

So there are men, and Luther is one of them, who 
are too great to be claimed by any one sect of opinion, 
or by anyone nationality. They tower so high that 
one sees they belong to the race. Who thinks of St. 
Paul as a Hebrew ? Or of Dante as an Italian ? Or 



* Reinicker Lecture, February, 1895. 



298 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 

of Shakspeare as an Englishman ? The intense nation- 
ality of these men is overshadowed by their cosmopoli- 
tan relations, their world-wide thoughts. 

So Martin Luther was a man sent from God to pre- 
pare the Way of the Lord for mankind, and not for 
Germany only. And yet the greatness of Luther and 
the work he did were not independent of the time in 
which he lived, and the influences which had been at 
work in preparation for his task. He must be studied 
in connection with his age, and as one manifestation of 
a movement greater than himself, even as the ocean is 
greater than the mightiest of its billows, and as the 
mountain range of the Alps is greater than Mont Blanc 
or the Matterhorn. 

No doubt the time was ripe for the coming of Luther 
when Luther came. Had he blown his trumpet in an- 
other age, he had not awakened the world as he did. 
He was not the first reformer. He had his forerunners, 
brave men, great men, who lifted up their voices for 
the Truth of God. Grostete and Wickliffe (to name no 
others) had made noble protest against the corruptions 
of the Church, but in vain. 

The hour of deliverance had not struck. But now — 
though to the eye of man the darkness lay as deep as 
ever upon the mind and heart of Europe— in truth 
" The night was far spent, the day was at hand. ,, God 
had been silently preparing the way, by various instru- 
ments, for the work of Eeformation. 

The revival of letters— the rekindling of interest in 
classical study — the faint movements of modern science, 
the general awakening of the mind of Europe, after the 
sleep of ages — all contributed to prepare the world to 



LUTHER AND THE BEF0BMAT10M. 299 

listen to the voice which was about to issue from Ger- 
many. 

Guttenberg with his printing press, and Columbus 
sailing forth in the fear of God across unknown seas to 
discover a new world, take their places in the picture 
beside Wickliffe, with his translation of the Bible, as 
forerunners of the Kef ormation. Nor is it without sig- 
nificance to the thoughtful mind that the year which 
witnessed the publication of the first Protestant Con- 
fession of Faith at Augsburg — 1530 — witnessed also the 
completion of the great work of Copernicus, " De Or- 
Hum ccelestium revolutionibus" Thus, during the 
first quarter of the 16th century, the astronomer and 
the theologian were laboring after a similar end : one 
to arrive at the true system of physical science, the 
other at the true system of spiritual science. Each 
found it in God's Revelation — one in the Book of 
Nature, the other in the Book of the Scriptures. 

Copernicus proclaimed to the world that the Sun was 
the centre of the Planetary System, its Ruler and 
Lord. Luther proclaimed that Christ, the Sun of 
Righteousness, and not the Church, is the centre of 
our Faith and Hope, and that to Him alone is due 
the allegiance of the soul. 

If we see in this general movement of thought, by 
which old customs and old institutions were being 
shaken and a new era was struggling to the birth, a 
preparation for the Reformation inaugurated by Luther, 
we do not any the less see in the Reformation the 
hand of God, or in Luther the specially ordained in- 
strument of God. 

We gain rather a grander conception of the Refor- 



300 LTJTHBB AND TBE BEFOBMATlON. 

mation as a movement whose impulse was from Heaven, 
when we thus see the Intellectual Life of the age open- 
ing the furrows for the seed which the Reformers were 
to sow — Literature and Art and Science harnessed to 
her plow, and all laboring unconsciously in the inter- 
ests of Religion. 

Equally is our conviction of the divine commission 
of the Monk of Wittenberg strengthened when we per- 
ceive how the Providence of God first prepared the way 
for him and then summoned him to his work. 

This certifies to us that here is no eccentric genius 
pursuing an idea born in his own brain ; no messenger 
running without a message ; no strong giant fighting 
against destiny ; but one whom God has called and 
commissioned to do a work for Him e 

For Luther was not, properly speaking, the product 
of his age, though his age furnished a proper soil for 
a growth such as he. He was not the mere hand on 
the dial-plate of Time, moved from behind, to point 
to the hour which was about to strike. He was not the 
mere crest of the tidal wave which was about to burst 
over Europe. No ; he was a distinct and mighty force 
moving the age onward ; leading it, not following it ; 
generating the tide of reform, not simply riding upon 
it. 

That was a shallow view of the Eef ormation which 
the Romish ecclesiastics embodied in the famous prov- 
erb, "Erasmus laid the egg, and Luther hatched it." 
And Dugald Stewart seems to us equally superficial 
when he says that the Protestant Reformation " was it- 
self one of the natural consequences of the revival of 
letters and of the invention of printing." The human- 



LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 301 

istic philosophy of life, as Kostlin well points out, had 
grown out of the cultivation of classical antiquity, and 
was to some extent the incarnation of a proud, self- 
satisfied and free heathenism, totally at variance there- 
fore with Luther's pivotal doctrines of sin and salva- 
tion. 

Hence the antagonism between Erasmus and Luther. 
Hence the wide divergence ere long between the Hu- 
manists and the Eeformers. Luther's most illustrious 
antagonist, Pope Leo X., was in truth the representa- 
tive of the revival of art and of letters. 

To be convinced of this we may first recall the typi- 
cal fact that Pope Leo X. was the most illustrious 
patron of art and of letters, and that it was his enthu- 
siasm for glorious architecture which gave occasion for 
Luther's attack upon the sale of indulgences, the 
object of which profane sacrilege was to raise money 
to build the great Cathedral of St. Peter. And when 
we have reminded ourselves of the attitude of antago- 
nism which much of the culture of the time occupied 
toward Luther, we may then ask which of all the nota- 
ble and gifted men of that time could have taken his 
place? Not Erasmus, though he was the greatest or- 
nament of letters the age produced. Not Melancthon, 
though he was the most accomplished humanist and 
the ablest theologian of his time. Not even the in- 
trepid Zwingli, the Swiss eagle of the ^Reformation. 

No, that was so emphatically the Age of Luther that if 
we take him out of the list of the Dramatis Personce, 
the whole cast falls into confusion: the drama has lost 
its central figure: it is no longer the same age. So 
deeply is his personality impressed upon it that it 



302 IUTHEE AND THE BEFOBMATION. 

would be nearer the truth to say that the age was 
moulded by Luther than to say that Luther was the 
product of the age. 

Let us then look at this man Luther a little more 
closely. Wherein lay his great strength? We answer, 
without hesitation, not in the force of his intellect; 
not in the originality of his genius; not in the strength 
of his will; not in his undaunted courage; not in his 
vigorous common sense; but in the depth and force, 
the vividness and reality of his religious experience; 
kindling and fusing all the forces of his great nature. 
If we would penetrate to the core of Lu ther's personal- 
ity and grasp the secret of his power over his country- 
men, we must study the course of that long series of 
spiritual struggles through which he passed before he 
at length emerged into the sunshine of peace and 
joy. 

At twenty years he is lecturing on Philosophy with 
great applause at the University of Erfurth. At 
twenty-two his mind becomes profoundly agitated by 
the inquiry, What shall it profit a man if he gain the 
whole world and lose his own soul ? " His whole being 
is filled and agitated now with the question, " What 
must I do to be saved ? " But he can get no answer. 

The Gospel of grace and pardon, so familiar to us, 
was unknown to him. The learned doctors, his in- 
structors, knew nothing of it. The Church, in whose 
bosom he had been reared, could give him no light. 
He answers it for himself by the resolve to abandon 
the "world, to renounce its honors, its rewards and its 
pleasures, and to enter a cloister, where, by prayer and 
penance, by fastings and vigils, he may fit himself for 



LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 303 

heaven. The resolution is speedily carried into 
effect; and the Doctor of Philosophy becomes Brother 
Martin of the Augustinian Monastery. But alas! the 
peace he sought is not found. In vain he submits 
cheerfully to every penance and to every humiliation, 
if by any means he may work out his salvation. His 
mind only becomes more unquiet, the tempest in his 
soul increases in violence, and he goes about with 
sunken eyes and emaciated frame, still asking tvhat 
must I do to he saved ? During this long period of con- 
flict he is several times reduced to the very verge of 
the grave by illness brought on by his mental anguish. 
Light at length faintly dawns upon his troubled soul. 
It comes from the Bible, a copy of which he finds 
chained to a reading desk in the library among the 
curiosities of literature. 

Eagerly the wretched monk pores over its pages, 
day after day, night after night, astonished at what he 
reads. So absorbed is he that he forgets his daily 
round of formal duties in the monastery, and has to 
do heavy penance for it. That which fills him with 
amazement is that, contrary to the Church and her 
learned doctors, this book of God teaches men to hope 
for salvation by Faith, through Grace, and not by 
Works. It does not prescribe penance, but repentance. 
It does not teach men to work out their own salvation 
but to accept the salvation wrought by Christ. And 
so this hollow-eyed, cadaverous-looking man begins to 
think he sees some light on his dark path; and slowly 
and painfully he reaches the conclusion that Eternal 
Life is the gift of God bestowed out of His mere 
mercy. 



304 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 

An old monk to whom he confides his distress points 
him to the Creed, in which "remission of sins" is set 
forth as an article of faith. Another whose mind the 
Lord had enlightened, (Staupitz,) still further in- 
structs him. And so at last, after two years of terrible 
struggle, Luther arises, as out of the grave, to a new 
life of peace and hope in Christ the Saviour of sinners. 

Though his feet are not yet free from the net of 
error and superstition, he has at least thus far achieved 
liberty — he is done with his vain struggles to save him- 
self. The folly, the fatuity of a sinful man's depend- 
ing upon his own righteousness is revealed to him. 
The fullness and sufficiency of Christ as a Saviour from 
sin by his precious death and sacrifice upon the Cross 
— this has risen like a sun upon his darkened soul 
never to go down again. And though he is still 
entangled in the meshes of that elaborate system which 
Eome had so skillfully woven, he has got the clew 
which shall at length unravel the whole, and set him 
free. 

Now this chapter in the heart-history of Luther 
throws a flood of light upon his life, upon his work, 
upon the Eeformation itself. It explains the tremen- 
dous force of his convictions. It shows us the source 
of that irresistible moral momentum of the man. It 
makes it clear why he was able to speak so straight to 
the heart of his countrymen. It reveals the source of 
that courage and steadfastness which enabled him to 
stand undaunted before kings and emperors, and to 
brave the temporal and spiritual power of the Pope 
himself. 

Ah ! the Law of God — the sin of the soul-^thQ sense 



LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 305 

of guilt — Redemption —Pardon— Eternal Life — these 
things were to him tremendous realities, in comparison 
with which the smile or the frown of this world were 
trifles light as air. 

The strivings of the soul after peace with God, the 
worse than vanity of all human expedients, or ecclesias- 
tical machinery for deliverance from sin, the glorious 
sufficiency of Christ to save even to the uttermost, the 
efficacy of Faith to lay hold of Christ and so give to the 
soul assurance of redemption, these were not theological 
dogmas, or abstract propositions, but matters of per- 
sonal experience, vivid and vital truths which his own 
heart had tested. 

Right here then, to our thinking, was the hiding of 
Luther's power, that the Gospel of redeeming love was 
to him so profound an experience. Right here, also, 
was the heart of that movement which we call the Refor- 
mation. It was the mighty effort of the human soul 
to recover the truth of salvation from sin through 
Christ by Faith. 

This, as we read it, was the chiefest glory of the 
Reformation. It uncovered the Well of Life which the 
Church of Rome had stopped up for centuries with 
the rubbish of human inventions. It set on high among 
men the truth, so long obscured, " i?y grace are ye 
saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the 
gift of God/ 9 It proclaimed with mighty power the 
fact which the Gospel so clearly reveals, "Other foun- 
dation can no man lay than that is laid which is Jesus 
Christ." 

We have directed attention to one chapter in the 
Life of Luther, that which tells the story of his inn or 



306 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 

struggles — the conflict and the battle of which his 
heart was the scene. Another must be opened, if only 
for a moment, in the development of our theme, that 
namely which tells of his external conflicts — his great 
battle with the colossal power of the Church of Eome, 
waged with intrepid courage and unflagging energy for 
thirty stormy years till he found rest in the grave — let 
us rather say, in the bosom of God. 

Ten years elapsed after the religious crisis to which 
we have referred, before Luther came into collision 
with the Church. During that time he diligently 
taught at Wittenberg the doctrine of forgiveness by the 
blood of Christ through faith. It was the shameful 
traffic in Indulgences which precipitated the breach 
with Eome. 

Luther, as a faithful priest and shepherd of the flock 
entrusted to him, is filled with righteous indignation 
when he finds the sheep of his charge preyed upon by 
Tetzel with his doctrine of pardon to be purchased by 
money. He denounces the traffic with voice and pen. 
His strong soul is stirred within him against this 
abomination thus openly set up in the House of God. 
He prepares ninety-five theses against Indulgences, and 
with his own hand nails them upon the door of the 
Castle Church at Wittenberg. 

That act of his was fraught with consequences 
which Luther himself could have only dimly foreseen. 
It meant that, in taking hammer in hand to nail up 
those theses, he was publicly assailing the supremacy 
and stability of that vast and mighty organization 
which called itself the Catholic Church, which claimed 
absolute supremacy over the consciences of men, which 



LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 307 

in the estimation of all Christendom, carried the keys 
of Heaven and Hell, and which demanded and received 
obedience from kings and emperors as its vassals, 

Its significance is well illustrated by a legend told of 
the Elector. He retired to bed on the eve of All Saints 
meditating how he might best observe the day, and, 
falling asleep, he dreamed that he saw a monk writing 
upon the doors of the Church in Wittenberg, As he 
wrote his pen grew and grew till it overshadowed all 
Germany; and still it grew till it reached to Kome itself 
and lifted the triple crown from the head of the Pope 
and cast it to the ground. The Elector drew near and 
asked the monk whence he got that wonderful quill; 
to which he made answer that he plucked it from the 
wing of a Bohemian goose. It need hardly be added 
that the Bohemian goose was Huss, whose name signi- 
fies goose in that tongue. 

This scene, then, marks the first breach with Eome 
and ushers in the first act in the drama of the Infor- 
mation. Then follows a period of excited discussions. 
Pulpit and press ring with the theme. Germany is 
agitated. The Pope rises in his wrath and demands 
that Luther recant. He refuses. It is God's voice 
that he has heard, and he must obey God rather than 
man, even though that man claims to be the Vicar of 
Christ and Vicegerent of God on earth. 

Then follows, in 1520, three years after the opening 
of the Indulgence controversy, the sentence of excom- 
munication against Luther, the terrible significance of 
which, at least in this world, the dungeons of the 
Inquisition, and the flames of martyrdom which were 
speedily lit up over half of Europe, sufficiently attest. 



308 LUTHER AND THE PREFORMATION. 

But the poor monk of Wittenberg is nothing daunted. 
His answer to the Pope is speedily given. Summoning 
the students of the University, he builds a funeral 
pyre, and, on the 10th of December, 1520, publicly 
burns the Bull of excommunication before the Holy 
Cr.oss at the east gate of Wittenberg. It is in the acts, 
even more than in the words and writings of this man 
Luther, that we are to find the significance of the Ref- 
ormation inaugurated by him. 

This burning of the Papal Bull suggests a second 
great blessing which we owe to the Reformers, and 
especially to Luther, viz., the deliverance of Christen- 
dom from the tyranny of the Church, and especially 
of the Pope. 

All Europe was in bondage to the fear of the dis- 
pleasure of the Church. There could be no salvation 
out of the Roman Catholic Church — this was the all 
but universal belief. Luther himself was entangled in 
this net for a long time ; but at last he escaped from 
its meshes, and perceived that no human voice has 
authority against the Voice of God when it is indeed 
heard in the soul. 

Neither Church, nor Council, nor Pope, can cut a 
man off from Christ who is really His by faith and love. 
This act of Luther's therefore was in effect a Declara- 
tion of Independence on behalf of Christian people 
against the tyrannies and usurpations of the Pope, 
and against all ecclesiastical usurpations whatsoever. 

Luther is now summoned to appear before the Em- 
porer Charles V., at a Diet of the Princes and Estates 
of the Realm, to be held at the town of Worms. He 
is urged by his friends not to obey the summons, To 



LUTHER AND THE HEFOUMATION. 309 

go will be to put his head into the lion's mouth. 
No matter. Luther will go, and alone, unprotected. 
His trust is in God. 

Scarce any finer scene, it has been truly said, is to 
be found in all history than this of Luther at Worms. 
He is sent for into the Council Hall. " And so the 
excommunicated one stands there before the Emperor 
and the two hundred of his princes and his nobles ; 
the man whom any man may slay, confesses Christ un- 
harmed before kings." They ask him to recant. Hear 
his reply: " Until I am better instructed I cannot re- 
cant: it is not wise, it is not safe for a man to do 
anything against his conscience. Here I stand. lean- 
not do otherwise: God help me. Amen." 

In order to understand the scene before the Imperial 
Diet, we must consider another scene — one which 
transpired in secret, witnessed by none. Luther stand- 
ing so boldly before the Emperor is interpreted by 
Luther kneeling so humbly before the King of kings. 
The night before his audience with Charles, his voice 
was heard by his friends rising in fervent supplication 
to Heaven: "My God, Thou my God ! stand by me 
against all the world's reason and wisdom. Thou 
must do it, Thou alone, for it is not my cause, but 
Thine. I have nothing to do for my own self; nothing 
to do with these great lords of the world. I would 
have good, peaceable days, and be free from trouble. 
But it is Thy cause, Lord, the true, eternal cause. 
Stand by me, thou true, eternal God. 

" I trust in no man. It is vain and to no purpose, 
all that is flesh. God, my God ! Hearest Thou not, 
my God? Art Thou dead? No, thou canst not 



310 LUTHER AND THE BEFOBMATlOK. 

die. Thou only hidest Thyself. Hast Thou chosen 
me to this? I ask of Thee that I may be assured 
thereof. I have not taken it upon myself. God! 
Stand by me in the name of Thy dear Son Jesus 
Christ, for the cause is right and it is Thine. I shall 
never be separated from Thee. Be this determined in 
Thy name. The world must leave my conscience un- 
restrained, and though it be full of devils, and my 
body, Thy handiwork and creation, go to the ground 
and be rent to fragments and dust, it is but the body, 
for Thy Word is sure to me; and my soul is Thine, and 
shall abide with Thee to all Eternity. Amen. God 
help me. Amen!" 

" Intrepid and unwavering, collected and even cheer- 
ful, stands that monk in his serge-cloth and cowl, and 
having spoken thus, he retires. Those clothed in soft 
raiment there sit restless on their chairs of State. 
They have heard words which have entered into their 
hearts as fire * * * * 

"The session is prolonged into darkness. Again, 
amid torchlight and silence, Luther is brought in, and 
says ' No * to the challenge of the Church and of the 
Empire, and stands unmoved at its echo." * 

Here again stands out one of the great principles of 
the Eeformation of which Luther was the leader and 
the embodiment. He stood for the majesty of Truth 
before all earthly pomp and power: and for the su- 
premacy of Conscience above all political or churchly 
authority. 

Those great words of his will never die, "It is not 



* Frederic Myers. 



LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 311 

wise, it is not safe for a man to do anything against his 
Conscience/' They strike the key-note of the Kefor- 
mation, which was pre-eminently the assertion of the 
rights of the individual conscience. They carry with 
them the vindication of the right of every man to 
claim direct access to God, who speaks to each by His 
Spirit. 

They sweep away the claims of any priesthood to 
stand between a man and his God as the exclusive 
channel of communication. They sound the death 
knell of priestcraft and proclaim glad tidings of liberty 
to the enslaved conscience. 

One more scene from the life of Luther will be req- 
uisite to complete the view which we shall present, 
Luther in the Wartburg. 

Luther is on his way back to Wittenberg, leaving 
the Emperor and the Diet engaged in drawing up the 
edict which is to declare him a heretic and a rebel, and 
lay him under the ban. In a secluded part of the road, 
the carriage conveying the reformer is suddenly at- 
tacked by armed knights. He is violently seized 
and carried off a prisoner to the Wartburg Castle. 
But he is in the hands of friends who disguise their 
friendship under an appearance of violence. 

See then that restless, energetic spirit chained like 
an eagle to a rock, in that castle prison. But note 
what he is doing as he sits at his desk week after week, 
and month after month, surrounded by a mass of books 
and papers. He is translating the Bible into German, 
and at the same time, without knowing it, he is regen- 
erating the German language, for his translation of 
the Bible forms a distinctly marked epoch in the his- 



312 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 

tory of that tongue. Fortunate — nay, divinely blessed 
imprisonment which gave leisure and quiet for such a 
work ! Happy captive, whose captivity furnished the 
means to give freedom to the Word of God ! 
Luther, hadst thou lived only for this — to give the 
Bible to thy countrymen in their own tongue in such 
vigorous and homely style that it speedily became a 
classic — thou hadst done a work for which posterity 
should ever honor thy name ! 

Let us not be misunderstood. We do not mean to 
affirm that Luther was the first to translate the Bible 
into German. No, for it is a well-known fact that there 
was a German Bible in existence at the beginning of the 
15th century — a hundred years before Luther's time. 
Among the first publications of the printing press were 
copies of it. By the year 1518 fourteen editions of it 
had appeared. 

Nevertheless it remained for Luther to assert, to 
vindicate and to establish the right of the common 
people to possess and to read the Bible in their own 
tongue. And as a matter of fact it was Luther's Bible 
which was first generally read by the German people. 
Its superiority to the versions that preceded it was vast 
and indisputable. He and his colaborers translated 
directly from the original, not from the Vulgate, as his 
predecessors for the most part had done. So con- 
scientiously was the work done, that he writes : 
" Sometimes we have been hardly able to finish three 
lines (of the book of Job) in four days/" " A German 
of the Germans, and master of the homeliest and most 
vigorous style, he so translated the Bible that it became 
the German People's Bible, as it had never been be- 



LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 313 

fore. It became a national work and fixed the German 
language, making High-German the common dialect/' 

So hollow is the pretence of the Koman historian 
that the Bible was already in the hands of the German 
people in their own tongue long before the time of the 
Monk of Wittenberg. 

Translated it had been ; but, explain it as we may, 
the people did not read it. Luther so translated it, 
that for the first time it became the German People's 
Bible, partly because of the idiomatic style in which 
he clothed his translation, partly also because of its 
superior accuracy, and partly because he awakened a 
thirst for the reading of the Bible, and convinced the 
people that it was their right to read it. 

But let us remember what this man did for the 
Scriptures besides translating them. He found them 
bound and he set them free ! (It was a typical cir- 
cumstance in Luther's strange history that the first 
copy of the Sacred Volume he ever saw was actually 
chained to the library desk !) 

He found them a literary curiosity — accessible only 
to the learned — he made them the possession and the 
prize of the common people ! He found them so 
neglected that distinguished doctors of divinity (for 
example Oarlstadt) had never read the Bible — he made 
them so popular that tradespeople and artisans and 
ploughmen as well as doctors and learned divines 
made them a daily study. In the words of another : 
"Shut up and fettered the Word of God had been for 
ages; a dead tongue concealed it ; priests warned men 
against reading it. Luther took it from its cell ; 



314 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 

opened it, held it aloft ; told the men of his age that 
it was their special book. Now it had free course ! " * 

Nay more than this. He successfully vindicated 
the right of the laity to search the Scriptures and to 
ask and expect the aid of the Spirit of all truth in 
understanding and interpreting them. Even this was 
not all or the greatest. For to Luther, more than 
to any other one man, it is due that the Scriptures 
were restored to the place of honor which they held in 
the early Church and from which they had been de- 
graded to make way for Tradition and Church au- 
thority. He perceived and maintained — it was the 
basis and foundation of his entire work — that the 
Scriptures are the supreme and absolute authority — 
the standard by which all doctrine must be judged — 
and against which neither Pope nor Councils may 
rightly degree anything. 

In doing this he undermined the whole fabric of 
Priestcraft and Popery and Superstition, built up with 
so much care during so many ages ; and he at the same 
time laid the foundation on which civil and religious 
liberty, feedom of thought, and the rights of con- 
science have again been reared in modern times. 

Such are some of the more striking scenes in the life 
of that great man whom God sent to awake Europe 
out of its spiritual slumber and to deliver it out of its 
spiritual bondage nearly four hundred years ago. We 
have selected them because they exhibit the most sa- 
lient features of his character and of his work, and il- 
lustrate the important principles which the Protestant 

* Horatius Bonar. 



L UTH EH AND THE BEFOBMA TlOJSf. 3 J 5 

Reformation vindicated, established and perpetuated 
for the world. 

The Reformation had undoubtedly its limitations, 
its defects, its weaknesses, its dangers. The men who 
guided it were fallible men, and their work was not 
without fault. Moreover there was of necessity some 
froth and foam generated by such a mighty wave borne 
on with such force and impetuosity ; such was the 
Antinomian fanaticism of the Anabaptists ; such was 
the Peasants' war ; such were the abuses of the prin- 
ciple of freedom of thought and the right of private 
judgment which then and since have been found in 
its wake. 

But for all that it remains true that the Reforma- 
tion of the sixteenth century was a great, an incal- 
culable blessing to the world. It swept over the 
nations of Europe like the breath of the life-giving 
Spirit from on high. It opened fountains of life 
and peace and joy for a weary, sin-laden world ; and 
we and our children are drinking of them to-day. 
Ecclesiastics who are enamored with the ideas of the 
dark ages have much to say of "the failure of Protes- 
tantism"; but let any man study the condition of 
Christendom as it was before Luther's time — the state 
of morals and religion, the state of the Church, the 
state of civil society — and then acquaint himself with 
Christendom as it is to-day ; let him look on that pic- 
ture and then on this, and if he be a candid man he 
must say that there has been a prodigious advance, and 
that in comparison with what Romanism did for man- 
kind during the three hundred and fifty years before 



316 LUTHER AND THE REFORMATIO!?. 

the Reformation, Protestantism has been not a failure 
but a triumphant success. 

As of the Reformation, so of the great Reformer who 
inaugurated it. We do not indulge in indiscriminate 
praise of the man or his methods. He had his faults 
— they were glaring, on the surface, patent to all men. 
He was hasty, he was often violent in temper and in- 
temperate in language. Meekness and gentleness were 
virtues he did not attain. His Christian character, 
though genuine and sincere, was not symmetrical — nor 
was his intellectual stature the loftiest or the most 
completely developed. Neither as a writer or as a 
thinker was he of the first order. 

" The scientific intellect," it has been truly said, 
" and the philosophical faculty did not shine out in him 
at all." 

But, when this is said, it remains true that Luther 
was nevertheless a right royal man ; a great soul, 
worthy of all honor wherever unwavering courage, un- 
flagging zeal, and unselfish devotion to the highest in- 
terests of the Kingdom of God are had in reverence ; 
a man who loved the truth above life itself, and who 
was so penetrated with the sense of her supreme ma- 
jesty, that all the pomp and power of the greatest em- 
peror on earth could not abash him when he stood for 
her defence — a teacher of such insight into the things 
of God, that he penetrated to the core of the essential 
verities of faith and salvation, and held them fast 
against the world ; a reformer and a leader gifted with 
such practical sense and with such mastery over men 
that he was able to make head single-handed against 
the combined power of the Empire and the Church, 



LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 317 

and also to guide the storm he had raised ; in fine, an 
ambassador of Christ and a herald of the Cross, who 
spoke in such thunder tones that he awaked a nation 
and sent far and wide over a continent the echoes of 
the Gospel of God's free grace — the glad tidings of re- 
deeming love. 



NOV 30 1900 



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